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A blockchain is a digital register of transactions, decentralized and distributed, using cryptographic techniques to ensure the integrity and security of processed information. The blockchain is revolutionizing the exchange of values, and its impact on society is compared to that of the Internet. As trust-generating machines, blockchains raise new issues in competition law, namely how to apply rules aimed at maintaining trust (European competition law) in an environment that, by nature, rejects the traditional trust of economic relationships, preferring instead the trust produced by computer code.
The blockchain environment tends more and more to become a generator and support of economic exchanges. The acceleration of economic exchanges around and within blockchain technology encourages economic operators to use any means to increase their market share and thus gain a competitive advantage. Competition law aims at maintaining a virtuous economic market where competition on the merits prevails over unfair practices. We will see in the course of our study what the impact of the blockchain environment can be on competition, while making a distinction between practices carried out directly between economic operators and concerning blockchain technologies, and practices carried out within these ecosystems where the law of computer code reigns. The study analyzes the impact of the blockchain environment on competition through the prism of abuse of dominant position and anticompetitive agreements.