How is the UK handling Cryptocurrency and the Law? Part 1: Cryptoassets

Kirsty Goodary
June 2020

Welcome to Extropy’s blog, we hope you enjoy Part One of this series.

At Extropy.io we’ve been taking a deeper look into the marrying of two distinctive worlds: decentralised cryptocurrency and the UK’s centralised legal system.

We will be looking at the UK’s success in tackling cryptocurrency’s legal status, ownership rights, and how the Courts have enforced legal action for cryptocurrency owners (since there are no legal obligations between participants in a decentralised system, this is particularly impressive).

In Part One, we will be reviewing cryptoassets from “Legal Statement on Cryptoassets and Smart Contracts” by the UK Jurisdiction Taskforce (UKJT).

You can find the Legal Statement here.

Introduction

The UKJT forms a part of the UK’s LawTech Delivery Panel and published its “Legal Statement on CryptoAssets and Smart Contracts” in November 2019 (following its Consultation Paper in May).

The panel was chaired by Sir Geoffrey Vos. It consisted of industry experts, members of the government and the judiciary.