ABSTRACT
Crypto-assets are qualified as money, a special type of property, or technology respectively in different fields of law. Even in one jurisdiction, crypto-assets can have diverse legal qualifications. Dimitropoulos’ theory to explain such diversity is that the new underlying technology has created a regulatory space in which different regulators compete to define crypto-assets differently for their own regulatory concerns. The diversity might seem conflicting.
Moreover, being different from the traditional highly regulated and centralized financial market, the market for crypto-assets is inherently decentralized due to advancement of distributed ledger technology (DLT). Due to this decentralized feature, crypto-assets might trigger fundamental freedoms under the Treaty of Functioning of the European Union. However, these freedoms do not always provide sufficient protection or framework for crypto-assets owners/users. Therefore, the EU’s harmonization action is justified: In 2020, European Commission launched the EU’s Digital Finance Package, and this Package embodies Dimitropoulos’ theory on crypto-assets and also includes three different legal qualifications for crypto-assets.
Such different qualifications are not inconsistent, as they follow the legal-doctrinal rationale. The European Commission is in the right track. What can be improved, is to make the underlying concerns of these three different legal qualifications more explicit.
Chen, Shu-Chien, Crypto-Assets In The EU Internal Market (June 2, 2022).
First posted 2022-07-22 16:45:35
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