Firm

In 2014 the Irish parliament passed the Merchant Shipping (Registration of Ships) Act 2014 (the Act) to update the regime for the registration of Irish ships and the regime for registering mortgages over ships. It is intended that the new regime will provide a more efficient, user friendly and accessible regime for commercial ship owners and those involved in financing the construction and purchase of vessels. Among other things the Act provides for the establishment of an electronic ship ownership and mortgage register. It preserves all of the basic protections under the existing regime for banks which have a mortgage over commercial ships. With the exception of one provision, however, the Act has not yet been commenced. Given the potential for the further development of shipping finance in Ireland, it is hoped that the government will soon implement it.

Initial coin offerings (ICOs) are now the focus of both the public's and the regulator's attention. ICOs are a digitalised method of raising capital in which an organisation issues tradable digital units (tokens) to finance a specific project or to develop it further. They are exclusively used to fund early stage projects of startups, often without a clear track record and with unclear success probability. In the course of the offering, the investor receives a token from the issuing organisation in exchange for cryptocurrencies (for example, bitcoin) or standard currencies (also referred to as fiat money). Tokens are created on a blockchain and exist as tradable digital units on distributed ledgers as a part of a protocol. For example, the Ethereum blockchain provides not only the cryptocurrency Ether, but also a platform to write smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain, which makes it possible for market participants to easily generate and issue their own tokens, mostly on the basis of the ERC-20 token standard.

PRC regulators have recently outlawed all token financing activity. But the rationale and legal basis behind the decision remain unclear