Features of Cryptocurrency as an Object of In-Kind Obligations

Despite the apparent lack of legal regulation regarding the definition of the content and rules of civil circulation of cryptocurrencies, which is the basis for courts to refuse to consider civil cases involving cryptocurrency, binding relationships related to cryptocurrency certainly exist and are developing. The impossibility of judicial protection of this kind of obligations raises the question of their legal nature and on the basis of what factors it is possible to transform these obligations into civil obligations subject to judicial protection. The purpose of the article is to consider the features of cryptocurrency as an object of natural obligations, to identify facts that serve as grounds for refusing to recognize transactions with cryptocurrency and their judicial protection, to establish the possibility of converting transactions with cryptocurrency from natural obligations to civil ones. When conducting the research, the main methods were general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis. Special methods such as comparative law, historical law, and formal law were used as auxiliary methods. As a result of considering cryptocurrencies as natural obligations that are not subject to legal protection, the conclusion is drawn: transactions with cryptocurrencies have a property such as latency, which removes this type of transaction from the jurisdiction of the courts, giving them the property of naturalness. The facts that serve as grounds for the courts to refuse to protect transactions with cryptocurrency are the following: 1) the owners of cryptocurrencies are individuals or legal entities whose personal law is not Russian law; 2) there is no information about the subjects of the transaction and other interested parties; 3) there is no information about the objects of the transaction; 4) there is no information about the transaction itself.