A Study On The Legal Issues Of Cryptocurrency

Since its birth in 2008,the cryptocurrency represented by Bitcoin has profoundly changed the financial order.The prominent characteristic of cryptocurrency is decentration,and its production process,total amount of issuing,and payment verification way passed through the technical rule setting in advance,and there is no centralized institutions to control the circulation process of cryptocurrency.Decentration realized the replacement of "algorithm credit" for "principal credit",the trading approval does not depend on individual participator or authority,but depend on the peer-to-peer consensus mechanisms,which changed the traditional credit creation mode and constituted the whole new credit system based on “algorithm credit”.The legal attributes of cryptocurrency are diversified,and single and linear attribute identification is insufficient to make the legal attributes of cryptocurrency clearly.It is smarter to make more open and more diversified explanations on legal attributes of cryptocurrency through starting from the subjective meaning and objective behavior according to the specific cases.Cryptocurrency also exposed lots of risks in development process,such as the risk of excessive concentration of Hash Rate,the risk of illegal trading,and the risk of excessive capitalization.The regulators should constitute a set of complete cryptocurrency normative system surrounding the principal contradictions of cryptocurrency development based on making the diversified attributes of cryptocurrency clear.The first part of the thesis is Clarify the concept of cryptocurrency.Through comparing the concept of “cryptocurrency” with the concepts of “electronic currency”,“virtual currency” and “token”,the study objects and its characteristics of the paper are determined.After making the concept of cryptocurrency clear,the connection among cryptocurrency and block chain technology and legal tender is analyzed further,serving as prepartions for the judgments of the subsequent properties.The second part of the thesis is The affirmation of the legal attributes of cryptocurrency.First,this part analyzed the lessons learned from overseas identification and the influences of domestic standards made on affirmation.Second,this part analyzes whether cryptocurrency possesses the properties of objects,the properties of currency and the properties of securities.In the end,it narrates the opinions of this paper: cryptocurrency possesses the properties of objects generally,and may possess the properties of currency and financial commodities in the specific practice.The third part of the thesis is The gaining of cryptocurrency and its risks.In this part,it mainly analyzes whether cryptocurrency corresponds to the mode of gaining the rights of objects in China and the risks existed in gaining cryptocurrency.The fourth part of the thesis is Payment of cryptocurrency and its risks.There are two major legal relationships for the payment of cryptocurrency: centralized cryptocurrency payment legal relationship and decentralized cryptocurrency payment legal relationship.The risks such as illegal trading may exist in the behavior of the payment of cryptocurrency.The fifth part of the thesis is The investment of cryptocurrency and its risks.Cryptocurrency is experiencing the changes from payment tools to investment(speculation)tools.The investment of cryptocurrency is mainly through two modes such as on-site trading and curb exchange.The investment of cryptocurrency mainly confronts to the risks such as price fluctuation and price manipulation.The sixth part of the thesis is The supervision of cryptocurrency.The development of cryptocurrency mainly faces with three major contradictions,namely,the contradiction between decentralized value connotation and wide involvement of centralized institutions,the contradiction between financial innovation and financial risk prevention,as well as the contradiction between generalized participation and participant protection.The supervision department should take standardizing platform development as the emphasis for supervision,introduce supervision sandbox system,enhance the protection of participants,and gradually complete the supervision work.