UK has proposed a bill to legally define digital assets as personal property, offering legal safeguards against fraud and scams.
The UK government has introduced a bill to Parliament that aims to clarify the legal status of digital assets such as cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and tokenized real-world assets (RWAs).
This proposed legislation will recognize these assets as personal property under British law, establishing clear guidelines for ownership disputes and providing legal protections against fraud and scams.
Central to the bill is the creation of a new category of property. This new category will complement the existing classifications of “things in possession,” which includes physical items like money and cars, and “things in action,” such as debt and shares. The introduction of this category will allow certain digital assets to attract personal property rights, according to Justice Minister Heidi Alexander.
This move follows earlier work by the Law Commission, which reviewed and recommended changes to the legal treatment of digital assets. Earlier this year, the Law Commission published a consultation on draft legislation to classify crypto as property, followed by a report detailing its findings. The conclusions primarily address crypto tokens, as noted by the Ministry of Justice.
“We conclude that some digital assets are neither things in possession nor things in action, but that nonetheless the law of England and Wales treats them as capable of being things