Author: Zhang Feng
In today's era, a striking trend is increasingly evident: technology giants such as Google, Microsoft, and Ant Group are collaborating with top research institutions in finance and law with unprecedented enthusiasm.
What strategic logic lies behind these seemingly cross-border collaborations? Why is such cooperation particularly urgent in the emerging and complex field of cryptocurrency? We believe it is necessary to delve into the driving forces behind this phenomenon and further outline the roadmap for future development for both parties.
1. The Internal Logic of Technology Giants Marrying Financial and Legal Research
The collaboration between technology giants and financial and legal institutions is not coincidental but an inevitable choice as the digital economy reaches a specific stage of development, containing profound business logic and strategic considerations.
First, compliance has become a prerequisite for the development of technology businesses. As the global digital economy deepens, technology companies, especially those involved in fintech, are facing an increasingly complex regulatory environment. Take Ant Group as an example; its collaboration with top law schools in China to establish a digital finance legal research platform is not merely a philanthropic act. By partnering with authoritative legal research institutions, technology companies can more accurately grasp regulatory trends, embedding compliance elements into product design and business expansion from the outset, thus avoiding significant operational risks due to compliance issues.
Second, financial business is a key path for technology giants to realize ecological value. As their operations penetrate the core of finance, technology giants must embed legal compliance into the source of product design to avoid disruptive regulatory risks. Moreover, financial business is crucial for realizing their ecological value, requiring the assistance of professional institutions to understand complex financial rules and risk logic.
Companies like Google and Apple are not merely focusing on the profits from financial services but are more concerned about how finance acts as the "lifeblood" that binds and catalyzes their core ecosystems. Through research collaborations with financial institutions like the Federal Reserve and the World Bank, technology giants can gain a deeper understanding of financial operating rules, seamlessly integrating financial capabilities such as payment, credit, and insurance into their ecosystems, thus forming a closed loop of data-scenario-finance, significantly enhancing user stickiness and ecological value.
Third, legal technology itself is a vast blue ocean market. According to incomplete statistics, the global legal tech market has exceeded $20 billion and is growing at an annual rate of over 20%. Collaborations between Microsoft and top law firms like Baker McKenzie, as well as IBM's joint establishment of a legal AI lab with Stanford Law School, aim not only to optimize their compliance systems but also to jointly explore this new blue ocean of legal technology. By applying technologies such as natural language processing and blockchain to scenarios like contract review, compliance monitoring, and intelligent litigation, technology giants are nurturing new business growth points.
Additionally, such collaborations are a strategic investment in corporate social responsibility and brand image. By partnering with authoritative institutions to jointly research cutting-edge topics such as financial inclusivity, data privacy protection, and algorithm ethics, technology giants can not only preemptively avoid potential public opinion and policy risks but also establish themselves as responsible innovators in the eyes of the public and regulatory bodies, creating a friendly social environment for long-term development.
2. The Extreme Importance of Financial and Legal Cooperation in the Cryptocurrency Industry
In the emerging field of cryptocurrency, the collaboration between technology giants and financial legal institutions is particularly urgent and necessary, determined by the characteristics of the cryptocurrency industry itself.
The cryptocurrency industry urgently needs to establish best practices and industry standards. As an emerging field, the cryptocurrency industry has long been in a state of "barbaric growth," lacking mature technical standards, business norms, and risk control systems. If technology giants want to make an impact in this field, they must collaborate with financial legal institutions to jointly explore compliant business models and technical standards. For example, when Facebook (now Meta) launched the Libra (later renamed Diem) stablecoin project, it faced repeated setbacks due to regulatory pressure, ultimately having to significantly adjust its original plan and bring in more experts from traditional finance and law. This case vividly illustrates that in the cryptocurrency field, technological innovation without financial and legal support is like water without a source, difficult to sustain.
Cross-border regulatory collaboration is the institutional foundation for the development of the cryptocurrency industry. Cryptocurrency assets inherently possess cross-border attributes, while regulation still operates within the boundaries of sovereign states. This contradiction leads to significant regulatory uncertainty and compliance costs for the cryptocurrency industry. By collaborating with international organizations, national regulatory bodies, and top legal research institutions, technology giants can actively participate in the formulation of international regulatory rules, promoting the establishment of a coordinated and unified cross-border regulatory framework. For instance, e-commerce giants collaborating with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on digital currency issues not only helps Chinese companies engage in global rule dialogue but also removes institutional barriers for their internationalization efforts.
Risk prevention and control is the lifeline for the sustainable development of the cryptocurrency industry. The cryptocurrency market is highly volatile, with frequent security incidents and illegal activities such as fraud and money laundering. Relying solely on technological means is insufficient to fully address these risks; it is essential to introduce financial risk control models and legal compliance frameworks. The collaboration between Microsoft and Ernst & Young in the field of blockchain compliance aims to establish a more comprehensive risk identification and prevention system to protect investor rights and maintain market stability. Without a sound financial legal risk control system, the cryptocurrency industry will forever struggle to shed its "high-risk" label and gain widespread acceptance in mainstream society.
3. Recent, Mid-term, and Long-term Cooperation Roadmap
Based on the above analysis, the cooperation between technology giants and financial legal institutions in the cryptocurrency field can follow a clear evolutionary path, gradually moving from solving specific problems to building systems and innovating paradigms. The so-called recent, mid-term, and long-term cooperation, especially the specific topics involved, are merely divisions for analytical convenience and are not entirely separate; they are interrelated and permeate each other, flexibly adjusted according to specific business scenario needs and industry development conditions.
In the short term, focus on specific risks and compliance challenges. In the short-term phase, cooperation should focus on the most urgent operational risks and compliance challenges.
There are many areas in the financial sector that can be prioritized, including but not limited to the development of cryptocurrency asset valuation and risk assessment models to help the market view cryptocurrency asset value more rationally; on-chain transaction monitoring and anti-money laundering technology research to address the increasingly severe challenges of illegal financial activities; and DeFi (decentralized finance) protocol liquidity risk stress testing to prevent systemic risks.
In the legal field, the focus should be on urgent matters, including but not limited to comparative studies of cryptocurrency regulatory policies in major global jurisdictions to provide guidance for corporate compliance layouts; research on the legal validity of smart contracts and dispute resolution mechanisms to clarify the legal boundaries of technological innovation; and compliance solutions for data privacy and cross-border data flow to address data governance challenges in cryptocurrency business.
In the mid-term, promote standard construction and regulatory collaboration. As we enter the mid-term, cooperation should advance to deeper levels of rule and standard construction.
In the financial sector, efforts can focus on establishing new financial infrastructure standards based on blockchain to lay the foundation for the integration of traditional finance and cryptocurrency finance; researching interoperability and risk management frameworks for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and private stablecoins to explore a digital currency system for public-private sector cooperation; and developing accounting treatment and tax collection standards for cryptocurrency assets to resolve the challenges of integrating business and finance.
In the legal field, it is necessary to promote the coordination and mutual recognition mechanisms for global cryptocurrency regulatory sandboxes, managing risks while encouraging innovation; recognizing the legal status of new organizational forms such as DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) to provide institutional guarantees for Web3 organizational innovation; and designing bankruptcy handling and investor protection systems for cryptocurrency assets to improve market exit mechanisms.
In the long term, lead systemic reconstruction and paradigm innovation. Looking ahead, both parties should strive for deep reconstruction of financial and legal systems.
In the financial sector, exploration can focus on a new financial market architecture based on blockchain and smart contracts, significantly enhancing financial efficiency and inclusivity; the theory and practice of algorithmic central banks and programmable currencies, rethinking currency issuance and control mechanisms; and a macroeconomic policy framework for a tokenized world to address the challenges posed by asset digitization to traditional macro policies.
In the legal field, forward-looking research is needed, including but not limited to the governance philosophy and institutional realization of "Code is Law," exploring technical paths for self-compliance; a cryptocurrency rule system under a global digital governance framework to address the tension between nation-states and global networks; and new legal liability divisions under the integration of artificial intelligence and blockchain to prepare for future technological integration scenarios.
The emphasis that technology giants place on collaboration with financial and legal research is not merely a short-term strategic behavior but an inevitable evolution of corporate strategy in the digital economy era. In the vibrant yet complex and sensitive field of cryptocurrency, the three-spiral structure of technology, finance, and law is accelerating its formation. Technology provides innovative tools, finance contributes risk control and value logic, and law provides the foundation of order and trust. All three are indispensable and empower each other.
Future competition will no longer be a competition of singular technologies or products but a competition of ecosystems and systems. Those technology companies that can first establish a virtuous interactive cycle of technology-finance-law will not only be able to stand firm in the waves of the cryptocurrency industry but are also likely to become important rule-makers in the future digital economy society. The deep collaboration between industry, academia, and research is the only way to this future.
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