Legal providing and risk factors of virtual assets circulation: national and international legal aspects

Virtual assets are a concept that has made its way into the modern financial and legal lexicon in recent years. Markets are formed around them, transactions are conducted with them, they are the object of increased interest in the field of investment activities. The need for legal regulation of new types of social relations transiting to the virtual plane stimulates lawmakers to take active measures concerning the formation of a legislative basis in this area. In 2021 Ukraine adopted the Law "On Virtual Assets", which defines the legal basis for the use of virtual assets as a means of payment. This study intends to consider the challenges facing the Ukrainian legislator in the light of the adoption of this law based on existing foreign practices. The study suggests that such obstacles now include not only terminological differences, but also issues of legal classification of illegal actions with cryptoassets, issues of theoretical and legal understanding of the new legal relations. The created technological innovations and the formation of new, related legal relations require appropriate regulatory and legal regulation. At the international level, there is no comprehensive and generally accepted typology of crypto assets, despite the general understanding of their essence, there are disagreements in the definition of what exactly the term “virtual asset” includes. Taking into account the transnational nature of legal relations in the field of virtual asset circulation, in the future the conceptual apparatus in this area will require the development of a unified terminology. This issue seems to be relevant both for foreign countries and for Ukraine. The Ukrainian legislator has so far taken only the first step in creating a legal framework for regulating legal relations in the field of circulation of virtual assets, but in the light of the legislative initiatives of the European Union, it is obvious that soon legal definitions and mechanisms will have to be harmonized with the terminology of the European Union. The same applies to the issues of determining responsibility, amending criminal and administrative legislation. At the same time, the existing challenges for legal regulation are largely related to the lack of a theoretical basis that can explain the features of new legal relations.

cryptoassets; fiat currencies; legislative regulation; virtual asset service provider