The amount involved in a virtual currency case is not ascertained; it is calculated. Which price is chosen and which day is used for the calculation lead to different answers that diverge widely from one another, and they also determine which sentencing bracket the final sentence falls into.
I. Four calculation methods, each of which may yield an amount involved
The first is the victim's purchase cost.If the coins you bought for RMB 660,000 were stolen, the case-handling authority will determine the amount involved as RMB 660,000. The coin theft case in Hanyang, Wuhan, followed this approach; that case will be discussed in detail below.
The second is the amount realized from disposing of the proceeds.In practice, some judgments hold that the overall value of virtual currency lacks authoritative and neutral appraisal by an assessment institution, and therefore the transaction value displayed on the platform is not used as the basis; instead, the amount of profit the defendant obtained by disposing of the proceeds is used to determine the amount involved.
The third is the market transaction price at the time the conduct occurred, calculated through commissioning an appraisal institution.Where neither the purchase cost nor the amount realized from disposing of the proceeds can be verified, some case-handling authorities will commission a social commercial appraisal institution to issue a price appraisal report, determining the amount involved by reference to the market transaction price on the day the conduct occurred.
The fourth is the lowest price on international trading platforms on the date the case occurred.Some procuratorates adopt this approach for two reasons: first, it facilitates evidence collection; second, it conforms to the principle of resolving doubts in favor of the person whose conduct is at issue.
In practice, these four calculation methods follow an order of priority: 1. First, examine the victim's actual loss, that is, the purchase cost; 2. If the actual loss cannot be clearly ascertained, examine the amount realized from disposing of the proceeds; 3. If the amount from disposing of the proceeds also cannot be ascertained, then examine the market price at the time the conduct occurred; 4. The lowest price on international platforms is a fallback approach adopted by some procuratorates under the principle of resolving doubts in favor of the person whose conduct is at issue.
II. The person who set that price must themselves have the requisite qualifications
In February 2026, the People's Bank of China and seven other departments issued the Notice on Further Preventing and Addressing Risks Relating to Virtual Currencies and Other Matters (Yin Fa [2026] No. 42), which expressly provides that business activities relating to virtual currencies constitute illegal financial activities, and that providing information intermediation and pricing services for virtual currency transactions falls within the prohibited scope. That notice continues the regulatory position taken in this respect by the 2021 notice issued by ten departments, the Notice on Further Preventing and Addressing the Risks of Speculation in Virtual Currency Trading, which was repealed at the same time.
Viewed along these lines, a problem emerges: on one hand, there is the official regulatory position prohibiting the pricing of virtual currencies; on the other hand, an appraisal report does indeed sit in the case file.
Practice holds differing views on this.
One view holds that:In light of the relevant regulatory position, price certification centers and forensic appraisal institutions should no longer appraise the value of digital currencies. This view was also mentioned in the article Classifying and Categorizing Offenses Involving Digital Currency, published in the Procuratorate Daily in July 2024.
There is another view:What the notice prohibits is the relevant business of trading platforms and financial institutions; it does not prohibit case-handling authorities from examining and determining prices themselves.
There is currently no unified answer to these divergences, which means that when you receive a price determination or a price appraisal report, the questions of who produced this price and whether that person was qualified to do so are not established facts that we must simply accept; they can also be contested.
III. When the price cannot be determined, that is sometimes a good thing
Returning to the case in Hanyang, Wuhan: from May 2024, Lin, Zeng and Dai, under the guise of trading virtual currencies, secretly photographed victims' digital wallet private keys during transactions, and after the coins arrived, secretly logged into the wallets to cancel the transactions and transfer the coins back to accounts they controlled. They committed the offense three times, and the victims' actual losses amounted to RMB 660,000.
The view of the court of first instance: there is currently a lack of clear judicial interpretation setting out the method for calculating the value of virtual currencies and the sentencing standards, so it was not appropriate to directly determine the amount as especially huge based on the victims' purchase amount of RMB 660,000; ultimately, a sentence of five years and six months to eight years was imposed on the basis of other serious circumstances.
From the perspective of the parties in this case, this is a relatively favorable outcome: that figure was not accepted, and the sentencing range was reduced by one tier accordingly.
Because the Hanyang District People's Procuratorate of Wuhan City subsequently lodged a protest, on April 14, 2026, the Wuhan Intermediate People's Court rendered a revised judgment on appeal,finding the amount to be especially huge, and the principal offender's sentence was increased from 8 years to 10 years and 6 months, while the two accessories' sentences were also increased from 5 years and 6 months to 8 years.
Lawyer Observations
Keep the relevant evidence. Purchase records, transfer vouchers, and chat records can all be helpful after the incident in arguing which calculation method should be used to determine the amount involved.
Upon receiving the determined amount involved, three things should be verified: who made this price determination, which price on which date was used, and whether there is a corresponding relationship between this price and the conduct you are accused of.
