Paper #5

Privacy Laws in the Blockchain Environment

Rocio de la Cruz

Abstract: The compatibility between emerging technology such as Blockchain and the new data protection obligations has been a matter of discussion since the European General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) came into force back in 2018. The main reason is that GDPR is considered the Regulation that has incorporated the strongest obligations and enforcement consequences. There are some areas of tension on how to comply with these obligations, some of which are still a matter of discussion that have not been concluded by regulators or in court. In this chapter, I set out an overview of the main obligations, relevant areas of tension and set out an opinion on what I have seen that in practice is working the best, and how I recommend dealing with these issues in practice, in order to do an assessment applied to a particular context in which a Blockchain network is used.

Keywords: Blockchain; Privacy; Data Protection Laws; General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR); Data Protection.