The notice defines the nature of Bitcoin: Bitcoin is not a currency, but a virtual commodity. Based on the denial of the nature of currency and the recognition of the nature of commodities, no financial institution or payment institution may use Bitcoin to price products or services, nor may it buy or sell Bitcoin or act as a central counterparty to buy or sell Bitcoin; however, ordinary people can buy and sell Bitcoin freely at their own risk.

Therefore, the "Notice on Preventing Bitcoin Risks" issued in 2013 actually confirmed that Bitcoin is a real and concrete property interest that can be dominated, controlled, and transferred by humans.

Legal protection requires the calculation of "property interests". As its legal basis, for example, according to Article 264 of the Criminal Law:

According to the aforementioned "Notice on Preventing Bitcoin Risks" and "Notice on Preventing Token Issuance and Financing Risks", ordinary virtual currencies other than BTC do not have the same property attributes as BTC in law; they are just a bunch of data with no property value. The theft of such virtual currencies cannot be punished by the more serious crime of theft; they can only be punished by the less serious crime related to computer information system data, such as the crime of illegally obtaining computer information systems.

Compared with other altcoins, the legal significance of affirming the property attributes of virtual currencies such as BTC is very clear.

As mentioned above, for a token to have property attributes, it generally needs to meet three criteria:

As a result, there have been some changes in the conviction of currency-related cases in recent years; the conviction approach has gradually shifted from property crimes such as theft and fraud to non-property crimes such as illegal acquisition of computer information system data.

At present, penalties for currency-related crimes are mainly imposed on two types of entities.

If the person promotes virtual currency and obtains cash from it, forming a hierarchy, and has violated the crime of organizing and leading pyramid selling activities, the money he collects from his subordinates for buying coins, cashing out, and other property may be deemed as illegal gains and should be confiscated according to law. These funds are illegal gains for the crime of organizing and leading pyramid selling activities; but for the buyers of coins in the subordinates, these funds are simply losses caused by being cheated in the purchase of virtual currency; according to the above provisions, they should still be returned to the actual buyers as the subordinates.

The money paid by people who bought coins and then promoted them is also the "legal property of the victim" as mentioned in the previous paragraph, and the "loss" caused to the victim. The reason is that when these coin buyers bought coins from their upstream and paid "entry fees" and other fees, their identities were simply victims; since they had not promoted to their downstream and collected fees, they had not yet committed accomplices, and therefore could not be considered accomplices.

Only after he has organized and led pyramid selling activities such as collecting entry fees from his subordinates, can he be identified as having joined the joint crime of his superiors. Therefore, before joining the joint crime, his identity as a victim cannot be denied; the fees he paid to his superiors are calculated as the illegal gains of his superiors on the one hand, and the amount of loss suffered by the perpetrator on the other hand. According to the provisions of the preceding paragraph, after the illegal gains of his superiors are confiscated, they should be returned according to their actual losses. Even if he is identified as the middle layer of a pyramid selling organization, as a victim, he should still have the right to require his superiors to return the corresponding illegal gains according to the property losses caused to him.

Finally, I would like to remind financial consumers: At present, although the Chinese courts have recognized the commodity attributes and property value of BTC and ETH, they have not recognized the legality of ICO and its tokens. Everyone knows the market size of BTC and ETH, and even the platform coins of large platforms such as Binance cannot compare with them. Let me borrow an official cliché: investment is risky, and you need to be cautious when entering the market.