The Paradoxes of Cryptocurrency Regulation: in Search of a Solution

Abstract

The Author exposes various civil-law approaches to the regulation of the use of cryptocurrency. The analysis focuses on the specific features of the concepts of cryptocurrency and digital currency, the latter having been introduced by the Russian Law on Digital Financial Assets. The Russian legislation considers digital currency as ‘property’, but does not assimilate it to money or other objects mentioned in the civil legislation. Restrictions are imposed on digital currency for its use as a means of payment, but no detailed legal regime of this subject-matter is defined, despite numerous references to it in various other legislative documents.
The Author substantiates in this article the need to make adjustments to the concept of ‘digital currency’ in the Russian legislation and to categorize all cryptocurrencies as objects of civil law providing them with an independent legal regime.