Asian Institute of International Financial Law (AIIFL), HKU

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AIIFL Series

In this series

Financial Law and Regulation Seminars

Meet the Team

Financial Law and Regulation Seminars

Tokenization, DeFi, and the Legal Architecture of Finance

Financial Law and Regulation

Date & Time Tuesday, 19 May 2026 6:00-7:00 pm (HKT)
Duration 1:00
Location Academic Conference Room, 11/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower, The University of Hong Kong
New update Recording available

Finance is being rewritten on-chain. This talk examines two structural shifts reshaping the legal architecture of finance. First, tokenization draws previously non-financial domains such as real estate, intellectual property, and digital environments into the orbit of markets, intensifying speculative dynamics and exposing individuals to financial risk, demanding a coordinated regulatory response across financial, property, contract, and consumer law. Second, decentralized protocols resist accurate classification under existing frameworks. A structured approach to evaluating them by function and governance layers reveals an overlooked intermediate category of partially decentralized systems that current regulation systematically misclassifies.

About the Speaker

Professor Marco Dell’Erba

Professor of Corporate and Financial Law, University of Zurich; (AIIFL Fellowship: 19 May 2026)

Marco Dell'Erba Professor of Corporate and Financial Law at the University of Zurich, Research Fellow at NYU School of Law, and Global Fellow at the Wilson Center. He is the author of Technology in Financial Markets: Complex Change and Disruption (Oxford University Press, 2024), and his scholarship has appeared in leading American and European journals. He has held visiting and research positions at Harvard Law School, NYU, LSE, and the National University of Singapore, among others. He holds an LL.M. in Corporation Law from NYU School of Law and doctoral degrees from the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne and the University of Rome Tor Vergata.

Chair

Professor Giuliano Castellano

Director of AIIFL, and Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong