Problems of Qualification of Criminal Offenses in the Sphere of Crypto-Assets Turnover and Mining (Uzbek journal of law and digital policy.)

Summary

• In 2019, the English High Court recognized Bitcoin as legal property in the AA v Persons Unknown ruling.p.7
• The European Union adopted the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation in 2023, setting uniform requirements with full application from December 2024.p.7
• Russian law enforcement in 2023 prosecuted a major official bribery scheme involving the seizure of more than one thousand Bitcoin.p.9
• The EU Transfer of Funds Regulation mandated travel rules for virtual asset service providers effective December 2024.p.11
• Prosecutors in the United States filed charges in 2024 against an individual who defrauded cloud providers of computing capacity to generate about one million dollars in cryptocurrency.p.13
• China enacted a nationwide prohibition on crypto mining in 2021, driving large mining setups into host nations such as Kazakhstan.p.15

Key insights

1. Unclear statutory definitions of crypto-assets as property create legal uncertainty that hinders the qualification of theft, fraud, and extortion offences.p.5
2. Valuation of cryptocurrency bribes is complicated by extreme price volatility occurring between the transfer date and court trial.p.5
3. Money laundering via decentralized exchanges, mixing services, and non-fungible tokens escapes standard institutional anti-money laundering controls.p.6
4. Generic cybercrime legislation fails to reflect the full hardware wear and energy loss caused by unauthorized cryptojacking attacks.p.6
5. Illegal crypto mining farms destabilize public power grids, increasing fire hazards and causing systemic blackouts in local communities.p.6
6. Treating illicit mining solely as basic electricity theft ignores larger threats to national energy security and environmental sustainability.p.6