Law Commission calls for evidence on digital assets

The Law Commission has published a call for evidence and is also seeking views on draft legislation on digital assets. It wants better to understand the challenges that digitalisation poses for private international law, and is focussing particularly on crypto-tokens and electronic trade documents.

The draft legislation would introduce a new category of personal property into which crypto-tokens and other assets could fall. Following the Commission’s report it June, it is proposing the concept of a “third thing”, such that “a thing (including a thing that is digital in nature) is capable of being an object of personal property rights even though it is neither (a) a thing in possession nor (b) a thing in action.”

It asks for responses by 16 May to the call for evidence, but by 22 March on the draft legislation.