State Bar of California declines comment on emerging “distributed autonomous organizations” but the issue remains

The State Bar of California is not yet ready to say anything, one way or another, on the legality and utility of “distributed autonomous organizations” (DAOs), collections of software code that digitally enable institutions that can run themselves on the Internet and the blockchain, without human intervention or control.

Asked about the legal status of these aggregations of code that can enter into “smart contracts” that executive themselves online, Laura Ernde, Communications Director at the California State Bar, told Etopia News that “The State Bar doesn’t have anyone on staff who could comment for your story.”

In an article in the current edition of the Economist, in an article entitled “The DAO of accrue,” the author discusses the DAO created by Ethereum and already capitalized with $150 million in “ether” crypto-currency as an automated venture capital fund.

Diving even deeper, the American Banker just ran an article entitled “The DAO Might Be Groundbreaking, But Is It Legal?,” by Tanaya Macheel, discussing the legality of the DAO.

Many DAOs are bound to be created within the jurisdictional confines of the State of California, and California state law will soon be replete with case law and possibly statutory regulation on the subject.  The sooner the legal issues raised by the disruptive technologies associated with the blockchain, “smart contracts,” and DAOs are surfaced and at least tentatively resolved the better (i.e. faster and smoother) it will be for the emerging Blockchain Revolution to take place.

Members of the California State Bar, and everyone else interested in the future of economics and finance in the 21^st century, can start to get up-to-speed on these subjects by visiting the links included in this article and reading the material presented there.