Written by Khushi Sharma
Christ (Deemed to be) University, Delhi NCR
& Lakshay Arora
August 2025
INTRODUCTION
The world is centered on data, knowledge, and the newest technology in today’s digital symphony. People are paying more attention to individual privacy when it comes to the gathering, processing, and storing of data as a result of data and the exchange of information during a transaction. Next up is blockchain technology, which is becoming increasingly popular and undergoing a radical change. The transformation’s goal was to create a system that would prevent any digital data or document from being altered or out-of-date. In the early 1990s, the digital currency token known as Bitcoin was the first to employ blockchain technology. With the aim to establish a decentralized financial system, Satoshi Nakamoto released a white paper titled “Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system”[1] in the year 2008. In layman terms, a blockchain consists of many blocks and each block has data within it and is linked in such a manner that the content stored within those blocks is safe and cannot be altered. The most emphasized characteristic of blockchain technology is that the system is significantly decentralized in nature, meaning that there is no central body or higher authority that controls the system. The information is held in various nodes instead of one computer, and its immutable nature is that once the information is placed in the system, it cannot be erased or modified. Blockchain technology is now being used in various industries other than cryptocurrency. Additionally, the interaction of AI with blockchain and sustainable blockchain is the emerging new technology. As strong continuous growth and use of the blockchain by tech giants, antitrust concerns and privacy issues have come into the limelight.
Concerns have been raised regarding enforcement, jurisdiction, anti-competitive agreements, etc. Further, the aggregation of data in a central data repository raises questions about privacy practices. Businesses, legal practitioners, and regulators must have constant communication as the environment changes in order to manage these complications, encourage fair competition, and protect the rights of individuals to privacy.
EMERGING BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY AND ITS IMPACT
From pizza-for-bitcoin to reshaping data management via secure digital ledgers, blockchain technology, beyond cryptocurrencies, has evolved significantly. Blockchain technology, with its unique features such as stability, transparency, and decentralization, is quickly becoming a game-changer across various industries, finding uses not just in finance but also in areas like supply chain management, healthcare, voting systems, and protecting intellectual property, all of which can be considered as gateways for the next booming global economy.
Blockchain networks can broadly be classified into three different types:
- Public Blockchain—In public blockchain there is no restriction on anyone to access the network. Anyone with a computer and internet access can participate. Therefore, it is also known as a permissive blockchain.
- Private Blockchain-— Unlike public blockchain, private blockchain requires permission to access the network. Only selected and authorized nodes can participate, making it more secure.
- Hybrid Blockchain-— Evident with its name, it is a mixed network of a public and private blockchain. It is also known as consortium blockchain, in which some parts of the network are controlled by the authorized nodes and some of it is visible for public access.
Businesses like Walmart use blockchain technology to track the origin of food items, which helps in ensuring transparency and reducing contamination risks. In the medical or healthcare sector, blockchain technology is being used to store patient information and documents, allowing for easy medical history exchange between providers while maintaining patient anonymity. The technology is also being implemented in electoral voting to make it more secure and transparent, with projects like blockchain-based voting in U.S. elections ensuring accuracy and trust.
The European Blockchain Partnership (EBP)[2], by utilizing the same blockchain and distributed ledger technologies, aims to create a reliable, secure, and resilient European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI)[3] that satisfies the highest standards for privacy, cybersecurity, interoperability, and policy application.
In India, the center is implementing blockchain technology in multiple sectors, including finance, e-governance, smart cities, insurance, healthcare, and more.
Despite its numerous advantages like security, faster transactions, transparency, immutability, and instant traceability, blockchain technology still faces some major challenges that need to be addressed, which are the high costs involved, privacy concerns, and antitrust issues.
ANTITRUST ISSUES IN BLOCKCHAIN
(i) Enforcement Challenge
The enforcement of the Competition Act, 2002, in respect of blockchain technology, is rather difficult on account of the decentralized and global nature of blockchain networks. Key enforcement challenges arise from the anonymity of participants, the absence of a single controlling entity, and the cross-border operations of many blockchains. Anti-competitive agreements, including price-fixing[4] or exclusionary practices, are hard to prove because the resultant actions on blockchain networks are often automated and recorded as immutable smart contracts. Identifying the responsible parties, in particular, may be quite significant in public or decentralized blockchains where miners, validators, or developers operate in anonymity.
(ii) Jurisdictional Challenge
Blockchain participants span the globe and might be based in different jurisdictions, which raises cross-border jurisdictional issues. The Competition Commission of India’s jurisdiction is limited to India, and thus identifying cross-border anti-competitive practices becomes difficult. Moreover, many blockchain participants are anonymous or pseudonymous, so identifying responsible parties for anti-competitive practices becomes difficult. There is no central controlling entity, and the system is highly decentralized, which reduces the overall accountability in case of any malpractice.
(iii) Anti-Competitive Agreements
Section 3 of the Competition Act restricts any kind of anti-competitive agreements between enterprises or associations of enterprises or persons or associations of persons. No one shall enter into any agreement for the production, supply, distribution, storage, acquisition, or control of goods or provision of services. Anti-competitive agreements in blockchain ecosystems can be considered under Section 3 of the Competition Act, 2002, which bars agreements that cause or are likely to cause an appreciable adverse effect on competition. To be precise, Section 3(3) of the Act covers horizontal agreements among enterprises or persons at a similar level in the supply chain. In the field of blockchain, this is probably agreements between validators or miners on fixing transaction fees or capping the volume processed, even the division of markets that could reduce competition at the expense of interest for the consumers.
In the same way, Section 3(4) of the Act brings into focus vertical agreements between the entities at different levels of the supply chain—the developers, platform operators, and the users. Exclusive access agreements or discriminatory terms imposed on users or developers by the blockchain consortium may amount to refusal of market access to competitors, thus constituting an AAEC.
Horizontal and vertical agreements[5] in blockchain networks—both explicit and implemented by means of smart contracts—could be found suspect, particularly when their object is price fixing, limitation of output, or denial of market access. For this reason, the blockchain entity needs to refrain from restrictive agreements under the Act, which forbids conduct whereby network cooperation might go beyond what is usually regarded as conduct injurious to competition.
(iv) Privacy Effects
The decentralized aspect of blockchain technology results in a complex interaction between privacy and antitrust issues. In relation to privacy, the defining characteristic of the majority of blockchains is their public, unalterable ledger that maintains records of all transactions on the network itself. While this guarantees some form of data integrity and security, it simultaneously means personal and financial data, if transactional in nature, will be accessible to all parties forever. It should also be considered that even though the identities of users within the blockchain transactions are safeguarded via pseudonymized codes, tracing back to the initiator is highly probable. Further, once data are stored in a blockchain, it is difficult or impossible to erase or alter it, and thus raise doubts about users’ right to be forgotten[6] as part of the privacy legislation, like the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, as well as highlighted under the right to privacy in many jurisdictions.
On the antitrust front, blockchains are decentralized, which in theory could help in encouraging competition by revving up the peer-to-peer transactions, as there are no middlemen anymore. But practically, huge players or a group of players as a consortium could exploit this lack of middlemen and have humongous control over the ecosystem of blockchain. Let us see this through a simple, realistic example. Picture a local market where anyone can just go and sell home-prepared food without having to lease space or pay a large vendor. On paper, this should be fair for everyone. But after some time passes, a few large sellers get together—perhaps they bring more inventory, set prices unfairly low, or even have authority over who gets to sell in the market. The same can occur in blockchain. A few dominant entities (such as large miners or validator coalitions) could potentially dictate terms of processing transactions or how much individuals pay in fees. That gives them a monopoly or oligopoly, which contradicts the notion of open competition.
Therefore, the central theme of decentralization in blockchain is belied by such centralization tactics, which additionally give rise to antitrust concerns of market dominance and restriction of competition. Additionally, the application of blockchain in DeFi or NFTs can result in anti-competitive behavior if dominant players possess most of the pricing power capacity or the majority of the network infrastructure. It can constitute barriers for entry of new participants. The combination of blockchain’s many attributes, such as transparency and decentralized architecture, makes it even more difficult to devise regulatory strategies needed to strike a balance between privacy protection and avoiding anti-competitive activity in the economic markets.
CONCLUSION
Among the most revolutionary products of the digital age is blockchain technology. By the above-mentioned characteristics of blockchain technology, it clearly possesses a humongous potential in enhancing efficiency and establishing trust in digital transactions. Whilst concurrently, this new technology also poses tremendous problems in competition laws and privacy issues.
With all that, from a competition law angle, the decentralized and cross-border nature of blockchain will continue to pose new enforcement and jurisdictional challenges. This is due to the fact that blockchain makes its users anonymous, and as such, it is not possible to trace those behind anti-competitive practices. Such conspiracies between participants, i.e., miners or validators, can also lead to monopolies, price-fixing, or market exclusion, or what we call market inefficiencies. Even smart contracts, which are meant to boost automation and efficiency, have the potential to be exploited to carry out anti-competitive behavior, which emphasizes the need for regulatory supervision once more.
Blockchain, being global, is far out of the reach of any country’s legal jurisdiction, which furthers jurisdictional issues. In the case of India, for instance, the Competition Act of 2002 is not able to deal with cross-border anti-competitive behavior in India as the users on blockchain are pseudonymous and, hence, cannot be identified and also because of its decentralized nature. International collaboration and creative solution by regulatory bodies walk hand in hand in attempting to address these issues. But privacy issues introduce a complication.
While transparency of blockchain results in advancements in data integrity, on the flip side of the coin are concerns of individual privacy. Because of the unchangeable character of a blockchain, it defies special privacy legislation like GDPR of the EU, or, for instance, its “right to be forgotten” principle. In addition, this blockchain pseudo-anonymity facilitates, in certain situations, tracking back transactions to their originator, which presents some serious threats of illegal surveillance and misuse of data. For both the policymaker and the developer, this equilibrium of the transparency that blockchain requires and the right to privacy of users continues to be the largest challenge.
Yet, perhaps it is possible to tackle and overcome these issues through the implementation of newer technologies like artificial intelligence. Governments and the global organizations too are on the right path in this regard: the European Blockchain Partnership as well as efforts by the Indian government to ensure that all the advantages of blockchain can be purchased with the least amount of exposure to risk. What is needed today is collaboration between businessmen, lawyers, and lawmakers to keep the playing field even for maintaining confidentiality and encouraging innovation.
As the blockchain evolves, it is essential that robust legal frameworks be developed to support the novel challenges of the technology. These need to meet the requirement to encourage innovation and the requirement to impose the competition and data protection rules. Blockchain legislation must be framed in the sense that it gives utmost importance to decentralization and stops the rise of volatile and monopolistic market tendencies without diluting its accountability and openness for sustaining the privacy of the user. Blockchain is very much capable of transforming businesses and empowering individuals, but to achieve that will involve ensuring consideration of how innovation, competition, and data protection will engage and intersect. If properly implemented with careful regulation, collaborative governance, and technological innovation, blockchain would perhaps be among the foundations of the world economy of the digital age.
[1] Nakamoto, Satoshi, Bitcoin: A Peer‑to‑Peer Electronic Cash System (Oct. 31, 2008), https://irp‑cdn.multiscreensite.com/c4f21a7c/files/uploaded/Bitcoin‑Whitepaper.pdf
[2] European Commission, European Blockchain Partnership (last updated Oct. 28, 2024), digital‑strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/blockchain‑partnership
[3] European Commission & European Blockchain Partnership, European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (last updated July 9, 2025), Digital Strategy – Shaping Europe’s digital future, digital‑strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/european‑blockchain‑services‑infrastructure
[4] Arcelus, Almudena; Nocera, Noemi; & Yenikomshian, Mihran, Mitigating Antitrust Concerns When Competitors Share Data Using Blockchain Technology, Harvard J. of Law & Tech., Digest, Spring 2021 (Analysis Group Senior Advisor & experts authors), available at Analysis Group, Mitigating Antitrust Concerns when Competitors Share Data Using Blockchain Technology (Mar. 16, 2021) (discussing Harvard Journal of Law & Technology publication), https://www.analysisgroup.com/Insights/publishing/mitigating-antitrust-concerns-when-competitors-share-data-using-blockchain-technology/
[5] BP Bona Law PC, Antitrust, Web3 and Blockchain Technology: A Quick Look into the Refusal to Deal Theory as Exclusionary Conduct (June 20, 2023), Insight — United States Antitrust/Competition Law, bonalaw.com/insights/legal-resources/antitrust-guidelines-for-companies-using-blockchain-technology
[6] GDPR-Info.eu, Right to Be Forgotten (GDPR Article 17 right to erasure), GDPR‑Info.eu, https://gdpr‑info.eu/issues/right‑to‑be‑forgotten/
