A monograph written by ten international lawyers and scholars and published in July 2015 claims to be “the definitive guide to navigating bitcoin law”.

The book is dedicated to the cryptocurrency laws in four countries: the United States, Canada, Germany and United Kingdom. Its ten authors, correspondingly, include three American, two Canadians, one German and four British. They are all lawyers, many having special experience in electronic payments, financial services or taxation. Some of them teach in universities and have authored research papers in law and finance.

Some authors of the book have been closely working with cryptocurrencies.  Christoph-Nikolaus V. Unruh is the CEO and  co-founder of DogeRain, an app to spread Dogecoins. Jillian Friedman is Chief Legal Officer and member of the Board of Directors of the Bitcoin Foundation Canada. Finally, Jerry Brito, the author of the foreword, is executive director of Coin Center.

The book addresses many topics important for the bitcoin world: financial regulation, taxation, consumer protection, criminal use of cryptocurrencies, fighting money laundering and terrorist financing. It aims to explain how the cryptocurrencies and bitcoin companies are affected by the legislation.

Questions of bitcoin regulation have been in the focus of attention since the cryptocurrency started gaining traction. In many countries, bitcoin stays in a “grey area”. Regulators often consider this situation dangerous for consumers and propitious for crime. However, bitcoiners argue that too much regulation in a given country would just kill bitcoin businesses or force them to move to other countries, damaging the development of new technologies.

The most well-known story is the New York BitLicense. On 24 June, the New York State register officially published the final ‘Regulation of the Conduct of Virtual Currency Businesses’. It means that to operate legally, all the companies that supply digital currency services to the residents of the State of New York must apply for a licence before 8 August.

ShapeShift, a digital currency exchange, decided to stop its operations in New York in protest against the potential implementation of BitLicense 3.0. “We either would have to do something we're not comfortable with or leave New York. It's a moral and ethical stand we're going take.”