Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning, and welcome to the 34th meeting in 2025 of the Economy and Fair Work Committee. This morning we will continue our evidence-taking sessions on the Digital Assets (Scotland) Bill with two panels. The first panel comprises Professor William Buchanan, director, and Peter Ferry, chief executive officer, both of the Scottish Centre of Excellence in Digital Trust and DLT; and Jamie Gray, partner, financial services regulatory team, at the solicitors firm Burness Paull LLP. We have received apologies from Sarah Boyack, Murdo Fraser and Stephen Kerr.

We will go straight to questions, if that is acceptable to the witnesses. The Digital Assets (Scotland) Bill is a short bill that brings digital assets within the scope of objects of property in Scots law. Does the bill adequately capture the definition? Will that be useful and usable, given the scope of current uses—and of potential future uses—of digital assets? Who would like to answer that question? Professor Buchanan, you seem to be trying to catch my eye.

You mentioned that there is a difference between permissioned and non-permissioned ledgers. Is that the same thing as your point about consensus?

To play devil’s advocate, I assume that a point that might be made in contrast is that although the bill might not capture and describe in detail the precise nature of every type of digital asset, it is trying to capture some of the fundamentals. At the very least, it is trying to define them in law and give an account of ownership and legal consideration, even if some of the underlying mechanics are not captured.

For example—I am mindful that there is a lawyer on the panel, who should feel free to correct me—possession is not necessarily the same thing as ownership. Some of these concepts may be analogous to that. Even if the bill does not capture the precise details of all the mechanics, it says that there are digital things, that they are discrete and that they can be owned. Are there still flaws in that? If that argument was put to you, what would be the issues with it?

Before I hand over to colleagues, I will come back to immutability, which seems to be one of the critical points. There is an absolute view of immutability as meaning that something is completely unchangeable, but I do not know whether that is possible in any circumstances, whether we are talking about physical objects or otherwise. Notionally, it strikes me that a digital asset that clearly exists as ones and zeros in an electronic system can be alterable, but the system is designed not to be. Is the immutability test sufficiently robust and clear in law, in terms of meaning that the design function of the system cannot be changed, as opposed to the physical nature of the thing?

I understand that point. Mr Tariq, as a KC, you might well have to use the legislation in your day-to-day work. The two critical terms are “rivalrous” and “immutability”. Are they well-established terms in Scots law or broader law? Are they sufficiently clear? I am interested in that narrow point.

That is helpful.

My colleague Lorna Slater will come in. Lorna, do you want to ask your main questions, in addition to any supplementary questions that you may have?

Thank you very much for a very interesting set of comments and points of view. There is a lot for us to go away and think about. Thank you very much for your contributions.

Welcome to our second panel, with whom we will continue our scrutiny of the Digital Assets (Scotland) Bill.

I am pleased to welcome Dr Alisdair MacPherson, senior lecturer in commercial law, Law Society of Scotland; Dr Hamish Patrick, partner and head of financial sector, Shepherd and Wedderburn; Usman Tariq KC, advocate, Faculty of Advocates; and Professor Burcu Yüksel Ripley, personal chair, school of law, University of Aberdeen. I note that Dr Patrick and Professor Yüksel Ripley are also part of the Scottish Parliament’s academic fellowship scheme.

I will open up the questions. I do not know how much of the session with the previous panel you listened to. In essence, we alighted upon the question of whether the bill covers the full scope of what is required in order to capture digital assets and their transactions. Although the bill captures the scope of the law in relation to digital assets, the principal question is whether it fully captures all forms of digital assets. Critically, when we consider the law in Liechtenstein, we see that it much more explicitly defines trusted technology systems and tokens. It seems to be more explicitly oriented towards capturing blockchain, as opposed to the more catch-all approach that this bill seems to take.

Do witnesses have reflections on whether this bill captures the issues accurately? Are there unintended consequences from the bill being tightly drawn, and are there any gaps?

Who wants to offer a view to open up the evidence session?

I do not intend to necessarily bring absolutely everybody in, but would anybody else like to come in?