The Law Commission of England and Wales recently released a paper on crypto ownership rights that has been met with praise from politicians and the legal sector. However, the report alone won’t resolve other legal uncertainties such as developer liability, as some in the industry had hoped. According to lawyers, the proposal does not address other legal concerns beyond token ownership, and there is still much work to be done to ensure legal certainty and make the U.K. a crypto hub.
The APPG welcomes the work of the Law Commission in this important area, said Lisa Cameron, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Crypto and Digital Assets. Cameron urged the government to move quickly on the legal classification of these assets where this may provide further clarity for the sector, regulators and the legal system.
Etay Katz, partner and head of digital assets at Ashurst law firm, said the Commission’s report paves the way for more developments, and for English law and the English courts being seminal in matters of digital assets moving forward. However, Katz warned there are still plenty of issues that need to be addressed.
The Commission’s report recommends that, with some minor exceptions, the treatment of crypto should be left to the common law, rather than hoping lawmakers can predict every possibility in all-encompassing legislation. This allows for a less rigid approach as judges can respond case by case.
The Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit set up by former Twitter chief Jack Dorsey to assist developers facing lawsuits, said the Commission’s report had far-reaching implications in Craig Wright’s U.K. case against a dozen Bitcoin Core developers and undermines the central claims of the suit.
Though the Law Commission findings are welcome, Katz believes they’re not enough. We need to move, in short order, to companies legislation, to regulation, to tax, and to any other area which is fundamentally important to the ecosystem, Katz said.