Financial Services in the Metaverse: Legal and Regulatory Considerations
摘要
The Metaverse is still in its nascent stages and, while businesses (B2C companies) continue to build a presence in the Metaverse and virtual world investments have surged, truly immersive experiences are still not achievable with current technologies. While there is potential for a fully functioning virtual world with some applications—particularly in the fields of education, healthcare, and gaming—its application in finance is still emerging. Therefore, the existence of virtual bank branches currently seems quite far-fetched. Also, what constitutes a fully functioning Metaverse/virtual world with an inbuilt financial system would need to be characterised by the absence of fragmentation or domination of the space by a few powerful players. This, however, would only be possible if it is a regulated space, but this is currently not the case since there are growing numbers of platforms operating in virtual spaces that are not subject to regulation. This chapter seeks to investigate the key legal and regulatory issues that would need to be addressed for financial transactions in the Metaverse to be truly global and interoperable between different types of Metaverse and blockchain environments. This chapter considers legal issues that may arise in enforcing contracts in a Metaverse context. It also considers regulatory concerns raised by potential financial services activities occurring in the Metaverse such as data protection, privacy, investor protection, financial crime, and financial stability, and how these may be mitigated. It begins with the evolution of the concept of the Metaverse and considers the possible types of Metaverses focusing on decentralised and centralised Metaverse spaces. Next, it assesses the legal challenges in decentralised Metaverse spaces and compares this to the state of enforcement in Metaverse spaces owned and controlled by regulated institutions, it reviews key regulatory and policy issues and how they impact financial services. It also looks at United Kingdom (UK) regulators (Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and the Bank of England) concerning services in Metaverse spaces and calls for coordination of activities at a global level. This chapter concludes with some reflections.