In the field of criminal justice, the legal characterization of virtual assets is increasingly revealing significant practical and theoretical dilemmas. In judicial practice, adjudicatory bodies often reach markedly different conclusions in cases involving virtual assets with highly similar modus operandi, creating a reality of "similar cases, different judgments." This not only results in a lack of uniform standards for sentencing but may also directly affect the boundary between criminal and non-criminal conduct, thereby undermining the stability and predictability of criminal adjudication.
At the same time, existing theoretical discussions largely revolve around the “property attributes” versus “data attributes” debate. They lack a systematic deconstruction of the normative concept of “property in the sense of criminal law” and fail to effectively address complex practical forms such as meme coins, pre-issued tokens, and tokens whose value has fallen to zero. As a result, theoretical analysis struggles to directly meet the adjudicative needs of specific cases.
In light of this, this article attempts to respond to the aforementioned dual dilemmas and explore a more explanatory analytical pathway, with a view to promoting further discussion at both the practical and theoretical levels.
I. Author: Attorney Shao Shiwei
Inthe previous article, we analyzed major theoretical viewpoints such as the “data theory,” “property theory,” and “eclectic theory,” and pointed out the cognitive limitations of case-handling personnel when adjudicating cases involving virtual assets. Meanwhile, discussions in judicial practice often treat virtual assets as a homogeneous whole, making it difficult to address the complex realities of different types of tokens.
Therefore, this article proposes a dual review framework of “typology” and “dynamism” as a more refined analytical structure. This piece will first unfold the first layer of review—“typological analysis.” We will systematically categorize virtual assets into several basic types based on their core sources of credit and operational mechanisms (such as decentralized consensus, asset collateralization, and specific ecosystem functions), and examine one by one whether they satisfy the core elements of being “property in the sense of criminal law.”
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Framework Proposal: A Dual Review System of “Typology” and “Dynamism” for the Criminal Law Attributes of Virtual Assets
Current legal research and judicial adjudications regarding the legal characterization of virtual assets tend to treat virtual assets as a highly homogeneous whole, with the objects of analysis mostly concentrated on a few mainstream currencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether. While this research approach simplifies the issue to some extent, it inevitably obscures the inherent diversity and complexity within the virtual asset ecosystem.
In fact, different tokens should be examined separately in terms of their legal attributes due to variations in core elements such as “source of credit,” “price stabilization mechanism,” “value stability,” “actual usage scenarios,” and “whether they are pegged to real-world assets (RWA).” Furthermore, the specific status of the virtual assets involved in a case—such as whether they have been delisted by exchanges, lost liquidity, never had liquidity added from the outset, or are “pre-listing” tokens that have not yet been listed on any exchange—constitutes key variables affecting the legal characterization in individual cases.
Therefore, to accurately determine whether a particular virtual currency in a specific case constitutes "property within the meaning of criminal law" or is merely protected as "data," it is necessary to consider the different types and specific states described above, and to conduct a dynamic, case-by-case normative evaluation based on whether it substantially satisfies the three core elements: manageability, transferability, and value.
Next, Attorney Shao will use these three elements as an analytical framework and proceed along two dimensions:
First, a typological analysis of virtual currencies based on their intrinsic mechanisms and credit foundations;
Second, a prudent assessment of the presence and strength of their property attributes, depending on the specific state of the virtual currencies in different cases.
Part I: Typological Analysis of Virtual Currencies: How Intrinsic Mechanisms Determine Their Legal Attributes
In criminal cases, the characterization of virtual currencies involved cannot be generalized. Different types of virtual currencies vary significantly in their sources of value, stability, and actual functions, which directly affects how they may be viewed in legal evaluations. We can categorize them into the following types for examination based on their intrinsic operational mechanisms and credit support.
Category 1: Native Crypto Assets—Value Built on Network Consensus and Functionality
This category forms the foundation of the crypto world. Its credit does not derive from any centralized institution or external assets, but rather from the intrinsic design at the protocol layer and community consensus.
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Key Members：
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Payment-Oriented Cryptocurrencies: such as Bitcoin (BTC), whose core narrative is "digital gold" and store of value.
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Public Chain Utility Tokens: such as Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL), which serve as the "fuel" for their respective blockchain networks, used to pay transaction fees (Gas) and deploy smart contracts.
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Governance Tokens: such as Uniswap's UNI and Compound's COMP, where holders enjoy governance voting rights over decentralized protocols.
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Meme Coins: such as DOGE and SHIB, whose value is driven almost entirely by internet culture, community sentiment, and social media narratives, lacking support from "fundamentals" in the traditional sense.
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Credit and Source of Value：
Their credit is a form ofdecentralized, cryptography-based trustValue derives from (1)network effects: the more people use and trust the network, the more solid its value foundation becomes; (2)functional utility: such as the necessity of ETH for gas fees; (3)Value of Governance Rights: such as the right to participate in decisions regarding the future of the protocol; (4) pureCommunity Cultural Consensus: such as meme coins.
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Three-Element Review under Criminal Law：
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Manageability: Fully satisfied. By holding private keys, users have absolute and exclusive control over their assets.
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Transferability: Fully satisfied. Transfers occur peer-to-peer via the blockchain network, with transactions settled immediately and irreversibly.
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Value: This is where the controversy over its characterization liesCore IssuesFrom a factual perspective, they possess substantial market capitalization and trading depth in public markets, with objectively existing economic value. However, from the perspective of criminal law norms, their value fluctuates violently due to the lack of a stable anchor. Furthermore, within China’s legal framework, their transactions are not recognized,lacking a lawful and authoritative judicial benchmark for valuation.For example, if the price of Bitcoin was USD 100,000 at the time of theft but had fallen to USD 80,000 by the time of trial, which price should be used to determine the amount involved in the crime?There is no uniform adjudication standard in judicial practice.This constitutes a fundamental obstacle to directly equating them with traditional “property” for the purposes of quantitative sentencing. This is particularly true for meme coins, whose value is as fragile as a candle in the wind, relying entirely on market sentiment,making any notion of normative “value stability” virtually untenable.。
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Determination of Legal Nature：
Such assets perfectly exemplify the attributes of “virtual commodities.” While they technically possess all the circulation characteristics of “things,” theirvalue volatility, non-statutory nature, and impossibility of precise judicial measurementrender them ill-suited to bear thestable and definite property interests protected by criminal law.Therefore, depending on the specific circumstances of each case, it may be more appropriate to primarily treat them asdata stored in computer information systems with significant economic value, which maybetter align with current judicial practice. Infringing acts (such as stealing private keys through hacking) primarily infringe upon the legal interests protected under data security laws. Such conduct may be regulated under offenses such as the crime of illegally obtaining data from computer information systems, with their market value considered as a factor in sentencing.
Category 2: Collateralized Stablecoins—Value Based on Asset Reserve Commitments by Centralized Institutions
These tokens serve as a bridge between the crypto world and traditional finance, designed to maintain price stability.
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Key Types：
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Fiat-Collateralized: For example, USDT and USDC, which claim to be backed 1:1 by equivalent U.S. dollar deposits or high-quality liquid assets such as short-term government bonds.
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Crypto-Asset-Collateralized: For example, DAI (decentralized), which is generated through over-collateralization with ETH and other cryptocurrencies.
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Real-World Assets (RWA)-Backed: For example, ONDO, which aims to tokenize traditional financial assets such as government bonds and private credit.
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Sources of Credit and Value：
Its creditworthiness iscentralized or hybrid in natureFiat-collateralized stablecoins rely on users’ trust in the issuing entities’ (such as Tether and Circle) audit reports and redemption commitments. Tokens backed by real-world assets (RWA) further depend on the clarity of the legal rights mapping to the underlying assets and the reliability of the custodians. Their value derives from theexpectation of redeemability。
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Review of the Three Elements under Criminal Law：
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Manageability and Transferability: Technically fully satisfied.
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Value: This is the aspect that most closely aligns with the concept of “property” under criminal law. Its pegging mechanism enables it to,in factpossess economically measurable value characterized by price stability. The theft of 1,000 USDT can be clearly quantified as a loss of approximately USD 1,000. Nevertheless, its credit risk cannot be overlooked. Whether it is the longstanding concerns regarding the transparency of USDT’s reserves, or the brief de-pegging of USDC triggered by the Silicon Valley Bank incident, these events have exposed the fragility of their “stability”.Contingent RiskIts value foundation rests on commercial credit rather than sovereign credit, creating the possibility of collapse.
In March 2023, because its issuer, Circle, had deposited a portion of its $33 billion reserves at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), the sudden failure of that bank triggered market panic over USDC’s redeemability, causing USDC to briefly depeg to $0.87. This incident revealed a key fact: the “stability” of stablecoins depends on the normal operation of the traditional financial system and the liquidity management practices of the issuing institution. Its “value” is in fact embedded with the credit risk and liquidity risk of traditional banks. Therefore, although its price remains stable in most circumstances, such stability entails clear external risk exposures, which stands in stark contrast to the risk-free nature of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) that are directly and fully backed by state sovereign credit. In criminal justice, this risk point constitutes a normative obstacle to treating stablecoins as entirely equivalent to “risk-free property.”
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Determination of Legal Character：
Stablecoins occupy a “grey area” in criminal law assessment. Their de facto value stability and quantifiability have led many judicial decisions to tend toward recognizing them as “property.” However, this is aconditional, pragmatic recognition, which sidesteps the normative issue that their underlying commitments lack ultimate guarantee by state law. It is more akin to a “quasi-property Judicial practice often faces a choice in this context: whether to emphasize the property-like appearance of stablecoins as widely used “means of transaction,” or to confront the legal inherent risks of stablecoins as “privately issued virtual commodities.” Consequently, the characterization of infringing conduct oscillates between property crimes and computer-related crimes.
Category Three: Utility Tokens—Value Highly Tied to a Specific Ecosystem
Such tokens serve as mediums of value circulation and functional credentials within specific digital ecosystems. Their value is not universally applicable and depends entirely on the operational status and internal economic cycles of the single project or platform to which they are attached.
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Key Members：
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Web3 Games/Blockchain Game Tokens: such as Axie Infinity’s AXS and SLP, or proprietary tokens within games in the TON ecosystem. Their value depends on the activity level of the game ecosystem and the utility of the tokens.
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Sources of Credit and Value：
Their value is derived entirely from trust in the project operator’s ongoing operational capabilities and the health of the game ecosystem. This constitutes an extremely fragile, closed-loop consensus based on utility. Once the core underpinning this consensus—namely, the continued operation of the game project and its player community—collapses, the “functions” promised by the token cannot be delivered, and its value basis is consequently obliterated.
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Review of the Three Elements under Criminal Law：
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Manageability and Transferability: Typically satisfied from a technical standpoint.
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Value：Taking Axie Infinity’s game tokenSLP(Small Love Potion) as an example: When the game operates soundly and the token has active internal use cases and external trading markets, SLP may be recognized as having property value in the sense of criminal law due to its quantifiable and realizable purchasing power (for breeding Axies) and market price. However, it must be recognized that this value is inherentlyproject-dependent, with stability far lower than that of collateralized stablecoins; when the project operator absconds, servers are shut down, or the economic model collapses, rendering the intended uses of SLP (such as breeding) impossible to realize, the token degenerates from a “functional credential” into a piece of useless on-chain data. Although its blockchain record still exists, and it may even retain residual value in rare speculative transactions, itsThe core, legally protected economic interests—namely, the specific utility based on contracts (white papers) or promises—have been permanently lost.Under such circumstances, it is difficult to establish that the illegal acquisition of such tokens has caused substantial infringement upon property-related legal interests.。
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Determination of Legal Nature：
The determination of the legal nature of such tokens must be highly dynamic and context-specific.A blockchain game token that is actively popular may be recognized as having property interests due to its clear purchasing power within the ecosystem; whereas the same token, after the project operators abscond, instantly becomes valueless data. This requires judicial review to pinpoint the exact status at the time of the incident. The illegal acquisition of invalidated tokens cannot constitute a property crime; the essence of such conduct is the theft or destruction of data, which falls within the category of computer crimes. This also highlights the fundamental distinction between utility tokens and native crypto assets (such as BTC and ETH): the value of the latter is based on global, decentralized network consensus and does not immediately drop to zero due to the survival or demise of a single entity; whereas the value lifeline of the former is entirely tied to the fate of a single centralized or semi-centralized project.。
Category Four: Hybrid and Complex Financial Derivative Tokens—Composites of Multiple Value Logics
These tokens have complex structures, often integrating characteristics of the aforementioned types, making them the most challenging aspect for legal characterization.
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Key Components：
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Algorithmic Stablecoins (e.g., UST, which has collapsed): These attempt to maintain pegging through a dual-token model (stablecoin + governance token) and arbitrage mechanisms, with credit based on faith in mathematical models.
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Yield-bearing or Security Tokens (STO): These explicitly represent equity, creditor rights, or income rights, with their value directly linked to cash flows or assets in the traditional financial world.
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DeFi Governance and Yield-Compounding Tokens: Certain tokens simultaneously possess multiple attributes, including governance rights, staking for yield generation, and fee dividends.
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Sources of Credit and Value：
Sources of CreditHybrid and Nested StructuresThese may involve "algorithmic models combined with market arbitrage," or "underlying financial asset rights coupled with on-chain credentials."
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Review of the Three Elements under Criminal Law：
Value Attributeserves as the central pivot of such review, requiringa look-through analysisAlgorithmic stablecoins attempt to create stable value through pure on-chain game theory and arbitrage mechanisms. However, their credit foundation (mathematical models) is extremely fragile under extreme market stress. The collapse of the Terra ecosystem’s LUNA/UST in May 2022 provides compelling evidence of this vulnerability: when UST lost its peg to the US dollar, the protocol’s designed "death spiral" mechanism was triggered—issuing unlimited amounts of LUNA to redeem UST, which ultimately caused the price of LUNA to fall to zero within days, leading to the concurrent collapse of UST. This incident demonstrates that the "value attribute" of such tokens is built upon an assumption of dynamic equilibrium; once this balance is disrupted, their value may evaporate instantly, lacking the stability of value persistence required for property under criminal law. It is difficult to argue that infringing upon UST during an active death spiral causes measurable property loss, as its value is disappearing synchronously.The value of Security Token Offerings (STOs) is closely tied to the legality and enforceability of the traditional financial rights they represent. If the structure is clear and rights are secured, their value attribute is the most robust, closely approximating traditional "property interests."
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Determination of Legal Nature：
No blanket conclusion can be drawn regarding such tokens; a“factor-by-factor deconstruction”is required. For example, the illegal acquisition of a security token (STO), which directly corresponds to explicit equity or creditor rights, can be characterized as an infringement of proprietary interests, thereby constituting the relevant property crime, with relatively few legal obstacles. By contrast, the illegal acquisition of an algorithmic stablecoin in a death spiral involves virtually no protectable property interests, making it more appropriate to characterize the conduct as a data-related crime. Its legal nature depends on which layer of itsmultiple layers of value。
is infringed by the conduct in the specific case.
Category 5: Centralized Platform Ecosystem Tokens — Value Built on the Credit and Commercial Success of a Single Enterprise or Platform
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Such tokens are digital mappings of traditional corporate equity or interests on the blockchain. Their fate is deeply tied to the operational performance of a specific centralized entity, resulting in highly concentrated risks.：
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Key ParticipantsCentralized Exchange Platform TokensFTT: for example, the native token of the now-collapsed FTX exchange, and Binance’s BNB (particularly in its early development stage, when its core value was directly linked to the rise and fall of the Binance platform).
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Ecosystem tokens issued by other centralized service providers: Its core value is likewise closely dependent on the creditworthiness and business prospects of the issuing entity. For example, the governance tokens of certain large decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) derive their value directly from the success or failure of the key protocols or assets managed by the DAO.
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Creditworthiness and Sources of Value：
Its creditworthiness ispurely and singularly based on centralized commercial creditThe value derives entirely from: (1) the market’sexpectation of trustthat the platform will remain profitable, act in good faith, and operate on a perpetual basis; (2) theutility rightsconferred by the platform, such as discounts on transaction fees, participation in initial exchange offerings (IEOs), dividends, or governance voting rights. Its nature more closely resembles a ““digital enterprise loyalty points with utility functions” or “quasi-securities” rather than crypto assets capable of independent value discovery.
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Review of the Three Elements under Criminal Law：
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Manageability and Transferability: Fully realized technically through blockchain networks, thereby satisfying formal requirements.
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Value Attribute: This constitutes theAchilles' heelof its criminal law attributes. Its "value attribute" is characterized bystrong dependency, contingency, and the risk of instantaneous value reduction to zero.TakingFTTas an example: During the normal operation of the FTX exchange, it possessed clear utility value and market pricing due to economic benefits such as trading fee discounts, appearing stable. However, following the collapse of FTX in November 2022 resulting from the misappropriation of user assets, thecorporate credit serving as its foundation instantly became insolvent, causing the price of FTT to crash, and it was ultimately scheduled for cancellation in the bankruptcy liquidation proceedings. This profoundly reveals that the "value" of such tokens is not endogenous or supported by broad consensus, but is entirely parasitic on the commercial reputation of a single enterprise. Once the underlying credit collapses, its market value evaporates accordingly. Therefore, itdoes not possess the relatively independent and stable persistence of value required for property under criminal law.Where a platform faces a redemption crisis or is on the verge of bankruptcy, acts infringing upon such tokens may target "property" value that is simultaneously vanishing, thereby causing actual property loss.The timing and specific amount are extremely difficult to define.。
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Determination of Legal Nature：
A determination regarding such tokens must undergoa thorough "credit look-through review"Their legal nature constitutes aspectrum that dynamically changes with the operational status of the issuing entity.：
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During periods when the platform enjoys good reputation and stable operations, because they carry clear, redeemable economic benefits (such as tangible cost savings),they may be recognized in judicial practice as a form of virtual property or proprietary interests.。
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However, once the platform encounters a major credit crisis (such as a run on funds, investigation, or insolvency), the property attributes of its tokens weaken sharply. In extreme cases such as the FTX collapse, the act of "stealing" FTT on the eve of the crash targets an object closer to adata rights certificate about to become invalid, rather than stable property protected by law. At this point, characterizing the infringing act as a property crime (such as theft) will face fundamental challenges, becauseThe legitimacy and certainty of the value of the object of the crime have both been lost.Judicial authorities are more likely to shift their focus to the aspect of its illegal acquisition or destruction as "computer data."
This article completes a "typological" analysis of virtual currencies, systematically distinguishing five categories of tokens based on their credit sources and core mechanisms. For each category, we have conducted a preliminary legal characterization by integrating the three elements of "manageability, transferability, and value."
However, static typology is only the first step in the analysis. In practice, the specific market and functional status of the virtual currencies involved at the time of the incident—such as whether their value is extremely unstable or whether they have lost liquidity—will directly affect their criminal law evaluation. In the next article, we will proceed to the second level of review, namely "dynamic review," to explore the specific changes in the property attributes of virtual currencies under different status dimensions, thereby completing the construction of the entire analytical framework.
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