property

It has been reported that the mayoral candidate of Incheon, South Korea, is accused of falsely reporting assets, suspected of failing to declare the spouse's cryptocurrency assets.

Finance Minister Scott Bessent posted on the X platform, expressing support for open-source AI and the innovations it brings, but stated that open-source is not an excuse to arbitrarily infringe on U.S. intellectual property rights.If Chinese companies engage in secret, industrial-scale extraction attacks and cross the line into intellectual property theft, sanctions will be considered, and they will be placed on the entity list.

According to Bitcoin.com, U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis stated that the CLARITY Act will change the way customer crypto assets are handled when digital asset platforms enter bankruptcy proceedings; customer assets should continue to belong to the customers, rather than being included in the company's bankruptcy estate.The bill requires regulated digital asset intermediaries to treat customer cash and digital assets as customer property and to segregate them from company property. The bill also generally prohibits brokers, dealers, and exchanges from using customer assets for their own or others' benefit without authorization.The bankruptcies of Celsius and Voyager sparked disputes over the ownership of customer deposits. In January 2023, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn ruled that the cryptocurrency deposited in Celsius Earn accounts became company property under the terms of use, involving approximately 600,000 Earn accounts and about $4.2 billion in assets.Lummis stated that the CLARITY Act also aims to provide regulatory certainty for developers, enhance investor protection, and improve market integrity. The bill will clarify the responsibilities of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in different areas of the crypto market, and it has already passed the House of Representatives but has not yet passed the Senate.

According to Shandong Legal News, a Bitcoin theft case prosecuted by the Li Cang District Prosecutor's Office in Qingdao has been sentenced. The defendant, Zhang, was sentenced to 10 years and 9 months in prison for theft and fined 100,000 yuan.In the early hours of a certain day in 2024, the virtual currency wallet of the victim, Feng, was quietly accessed, and 107 Bitcoins were transferred, equivalent to over 22.54 million yuan at the market price on that day. It was found that Feng had entrusted an acquaintance, Zhang, to assist with the operation. During the process of registering the wallet on behalf of Feng, Zhang obtained the mnemonic phrase, and after multiple attempts in the early morning, he cracked the wallet and transferred the Bitcoins. After being apprehended, Zhang claimed that his actions were a "protective takeover" to prevent the Bitcoins from being stolen by others. The prosecution traced the funds and found that the stolen Bitcoins were transferred multiple times and exchanged for over 660,000 yuan, exposing his lies.The prosecution determined that Bitcoin has economic value and exclusive control, meeting the core characteristics of "property" in criminal law, and can be the object of theft. The actual proceeds from the sale of the stolen Bitcoins, amounting to over 660,000 yuan, were used as the basis for the theft amount. After the defendant appealed, in November 2025, the Qingdao Intermediate People's Court ruled to dismiss the appeal and upheld the original sentence. This case is a typical example of Qingdao's legal punishment of crimes in the virtual currency field, clearly conveying the judicial stance: activities related to virtual currency must be conducted within the legal framework, and stealing others' virtual property also constitutes a crime.

According to the "Urban Renewal '14th Five-Year' Plan" issued by the State Council on May 22, 2026, the State Council clearly proposed to promote the empowerment of blockchain technology in housing transactions, property registration, and other fields to enhance the intelligence and refinement of urban governance.The plan simultaneously deploys the construction of a City Information Model (CIM) basic platform, creating a compact, unified, data-integrated, and efficient collaborative urban digital foundation. It aims to improve the CIM basic database and standard system, advance the coding of housing construction and municipal facilities, build a national basic information database for housing construction and municipal facilities, and establish a three-tier urban operation management service platform system at the national, provincial, and city levels, promoting a "one network for unified management" of urban operations.

According to Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal, Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger has signed HB 798, a bill that extends the state's unclaimed property regulations to digital assets and ensures that digital assets can be managed for attribution as they are.This initiative aims to improve the legal attribution and handling mechanisms for digital assets. Paul Grewal expressed his gratitude for this.

Coinbase and mortgage platform Better Home & Finance announced a partnership to launch a home loan product secured by Bitcoin or USDC, guaranteed by Fannie Mae. Borrowers do not need to sell their crypto assets; they can use them as collateral to apply for an independent loan to pay the down payment while also being approved for a standard mortgage, ultimately holding two loans with the same interest rate and repayment period, with monthly payments combined.The product complies with Fannie Mae guidelines, with interest rates significantly lower than traditional crypto-backed loans. If the price of Bitcoin drops, the collateral will not face forced liquidation due to market fluctuations, only facing liquidation risk after 60 days of overdue payments. Borrowers using USDC as collateral can offset part of the loan interest with the earnings generated from the collateral.Coinbase One members can complete transactions through Better and receive a rebate on transaction fees equivalent to 1% of the mortgage amount, capped at $10,000. The two companies stated that they plan to expand the range of eligible collateral to include tokenized stocks and fixed-income assets in the future.

China Property Investment (00736.HK) announced that the company purchased a total of 402.91 BNB in the open market, with a total value of approximately HKD 2 million (excluding transaction costs).According to previous news from ChainCatcher, China Property Investment Holdings Limited (736 HK) announced that the board has resolved to advance the asset allocation plan: subject to compliance with relevant laws and regulations and risk control, it intends to use its own funds to purchase and hold BNB and other suitable digital assets in the open market as the company's strategic reserve assets.

According to Bitsmedia, the State Duma of Russia has passed a law in its third and final reading that clearly outlines the procedures for the confiscation and freezing of cryptocurrencies in criminal cases.The bill confirms the legal status of cryptocurrencies as property and requires detailed documentation of asset types, quantities, and wallet addresses during confiscation. The bill allows confiscated cryptocurrencies to be transferred to a designated state wallet and authorizes government agencies to cooperate with foreign exchanges to implement confiscation measures. The bill still requires approval from the Federation Council and the president's signature, and will take effect 10 days after its official publication.Previously, the Constitutional Court of Russia had allowed citizens to protect their digital currency rights in court, even if not declared to the tax authorities.

The Arizona Senate Finance Committee passed the SB 1044 bill and SCR 1003 joint resolution with a vote of 4 to 3. This series of proposals was introduced by Wendy Rogers and aims to exempt virtual currency from property tax. If the proposal is approved, SCR 1003 will allow voters to decide in November whether to amend the state constitution to formally establish this tax exemption policy.The SB 1044 bill seeks to amend state law to define virtual currency, characterizing it as a digital representation that serves as a medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value, and is not a dollar or foreign currency. Although Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed several cryptocurrency-related bills in 2025, including SB 1025, which aimed to establish a Bitcoin strategic reserve, and SB 1024, which allowed the use of cryptocurrency for tax payments, the current tax exemption proposal has now been referred to the Senate Rules Committee for further consideration.

The Russian Constitutional Court recently ruled that cryptocurrency assets fall under the category of property protected by property rights, a decision that is expected to have far-reaching implications for future civil disputes and criminal cases involving cryptocurrency assets.Ignat Likhunov, head of the Russian law firm Cartesius, stated that this ruling provides clear legal grounds for law enforcement agencies and courts when dealing with issues related to stolen or disputed digital assets, and establishes an important precedent. The ruling also clarifies that as long as cryptocurrency assets are legally obtained, their property rights should be protected by the judiciary, even if they have not been declared to tax authorities.The case originated from a civil lawsuit filed by Moscow resident Dmitry Timchenko. In 2023, Timchenko lent 1,000 USDT to another party, but the latter failed to return it as agreed. A lower court had previously dismissed his claim on the grounds that "stablecoins are not within the scope of digital financial asset legislation." The Constitutional Court pointed out that failing to declare cryptocurrency assets does not automatically negate property rights, and the relevant declaration obligations only apply to miners.As this ruling comes into effect, Russia is advancing a new round of cryptocurrency regulatory legislation. Analysts believe that this judgment provides clearer judicial protection for cryptocurrency holders before the legislation is completed.

The authoritative journal "Digital Legal Governance," supervised by the Supreme People's Court of China, has recently published its 6th issue of 2025 (the 18th overall). This issue focuses on digital transactions, electronic currency, virtual property, generative artificial intelligence, and data element governance, with several articles directly addressing the institutional foundational issues related to blockchain and crypto assets, signaling a clear acceleration in the improvement of legal governance for digital assets.In the "Overseas Observations" section, the articles systematically review the 2022 amendments to the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) in the United States, focusing on electronic contracting, electronic currency, virtual property based on distributed ledgers, and the new form of property rights known as "controllable electronic records." It argues that the institutional design in aspects of circulation, control, guarantee, and good faith acquisition of virtual currency has significant reference value for China's digital asset and blockchain legislation. Additionally, several articles in this issue discuss topics such as training data for generative artificial intelligence, data portability rights, public data, autonomous driving and intelligent connected vehicles, and digital copyright protection, emphasizing the need to balance technological innovation, market efficiency, and rights protection through institutional reconstruction in the context of rapid technological evolution.Analysis indicates that "Digital Legal Governance," as an important theoretical window within the Supreme Court system, focusing on digital transactions, electronic currency, and virtual property, shows that these topics have moved from the academic frontier into the core vision of judicial and institutional design, providing important policy and theoretical references for the future improvement of rules related to blockchain, digital assets, and Web3.

The WeChat official account of the Supreme People's Court published an article in its managed academic journal "Digital Rule of Law" titled "Commercial Law Reform Facing Digital Transactions, Electronic Currency, and Virtual Property," which points out: The amendments to the Uniform Commercial Code, jointly revised by the American Law Institute and the Uniform Law Commission, were officially passed in 2022 and subsequently widely adopted by state legislatures in the United States. These amendments incorporate a variety of transaction methods, including electronic forms, clarify the relationship between tangible currency, central bank digital currency, and other virtual currencies, create a new type of property called "controllable electronic records," and specify the control and circulation rules for such property.China's civil and commercial regulations should also be oriented towards the development of digital transactions, electronic currency, and virtual property, aiming for practical-oriented legal improvements to stimulate economic and technological development and gain an advantage in international institutional competition.

China Property Investment Holdings Limited (736 HK) announced that the board has resolved to advance the asset allocation plan: subject to compliance with relevant laws and regulations and risk control, it intends to use its own funds to purchase and hold BNB and other suitable digital assets in the open market as the company's strategic reserve assets.

USDC issuer Circle has announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire the Interop Labs team and its proprietary intellectual property. This acquisition is expected to be completed in early 2026. Circle looks forward to contributing to the broader interoperability space and continuing to explore opportunities that align with its vision of an open, interconnected, and scalable on-chain economy.Interop Labs has been a key contributor to Axelar, one of the most advanced frameworks in cross-chain communication and token transfer, and has been driving the core development of Axelar alongside a growing community of open-source contributors. By directly integrating the talent and technology of Interop Labs into Circle, the aim is to accelerate the advancement of two core initiatives: the first is Arc—Circle's blockchain layer designed for enterprise applications, committed to becoming the operating system of the internet economy;The second is the cross-chain transfer protocol. It is important to clarify that this transaction only involves the Interop Labs team and its proprietary intellectual property. As this team joins Circle, the Axelar network, foundation, and AXL token will continue to operate independently under community governance, and the open-source intellectual property will remain open. Another contributor to the Axelar project, Common Prefix, will take over the relevant work of Interop Labs.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong posted on social media, "Cryptocurrency helps create property rights, a sound monetary system, and free trade for everyone. But it is not a panacea; it still requires institutional reforms such as advancing deregulation and eliminating corruption."

According to CriptoNoticias, the real estate market in Venezuela is accelerating the adoption of BTC and stablecoin USDT for property transactions. Fernando Di Jerónimo, president of the Caracas Metropolitan Real Estate Chamber, confirmed that real estate transactions using cryptocurrencies have become frequent in the country, mainly concentrated in high-end areas of the capital such as Chacao, Baruta, El Hatillo, and Las Mercedes commercial district.It is reported that these transactions are conducted through cryptocurrency exchanges for instant payments, covering a range of properties from residential apartments to office buildings, with many transactions completed in installments by overseas buyers. Di Jerónimo stated that although Venezuela has had the "Cryptocurrency Assets Law" since 2020, the relevant regulatory provisions are still not well-developed, lacking the integrity of a legal framework. He also warned that the lack of regulation could lead to some transactions evading taxes.

According to Cointelegraph, the UK has officially passed a bill that recognizes digital assets, including cryptocurrencies and stablecoins, as "property." Advocates say this move will provide stronger legal protections for crypto users.John McFall, the Speaker of the House of Lords, stated on Tuesday that the Property (Digital Assets etc) Bill has received Royal Assent, which is the formal approval from King Charles III, and has officially become law. Freddie New, the policy director of the Bitcoin Policy UK organization, stated on X that the bill "becoming law is a huge step forward for Bitcoin's development in the UK and is a significant positive for everyone holding and using Bitcoin in the UK."In the UK, the common law system, developed through judicial precedents, had previously recognized digital assets as property. However, this bill aims to formally enshrine this principle into legislation and implement the recommendations made by the Law Commission for England and Wales in 2024—specifically, to clearly define crypto assets as a new category of personal property rights to enhance legal clarity.