Code is law and law is code - can Blockchain be without ethics?

NOT so long ago, Warren Buffett had dismissed cryptocurrency as "rat poison". Yet the price of bitcoin rose to hedge against a "QE infinity" (massive fiscal spending) bubble. Wider applications of the underlying Blockchain technology are also growing. On Oct 28, 2020, Cambodia launched Project Bakong, the first Blockchain-based Central Bank Digital Currency. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership will enable fuller adoption of Blockchain through the agreements on distributed data storage and e-signature. Blockchain is poised to advance the Fourth Industrial Revolution with P2P (Peer-to-Peer) exchange of value. It will change the conduct of businesses.

This is why Singapore universities have pushed for digital literacy of Blockchain. However, it is less intuitive for us to emphasise ethical literacy. Blockchain applications are not just defined by its technology. The cultural attitudes of the persons who create the Blockchain and user interface, and the social issues which arise, will involve ethical considerations.

The lack of ethical literacy is evident from a recent class that we taught on emerging technologies and the law. We had excitedly introduced the emerging field of fusing artificial intelligence (AI) to Blockchain. One illustration is a smart contract being powered by AI, which is still not widely adopted.