"This book examines how private law principles apply to transactions involving digital assets, including cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, NFTs, and tokenized assets. It advances two core propositions. First, current legal approaches dangerously prioritize financial regulation while completely neglecting private law and property law especially. Second, when private law is considered, market participants erroneously assume that contracts can override mandatory rules for property rights, bailments, secured transactions, and related fields, binding third parties not privy to these agreements. Professors Odinet and Tosato demonstrate how these twin failures yield defective transactional structures, judicial confusion, and inequitable loss allocation. At the outset, this book establishes a foundational framework analyzing digital assets as property, the legal limits of tokenization, and the contours of custody arrangements. Thereafter, it applies this conceptual apparatus to case studies examining NFTs, debt tokens, real estate tokenization, and stablecoins. This inquiry reveals how the consistent disregard or misapplication of private law frustrates parties expectations, distorts incentives, and ultimately undermines true innovation.

Through rigorous doctrinal analysis and normative recommendations, this book equips lawmakers, judges, and lawyers with key insights to formulate effective rules, adjudicate disputes, and provide market participants greater certainty. The work ultimately advocates for private law as essential to fostering innovation, efficiency, and fairness in the digital economy"-- Provided by publisher.