Victory In Victoria

1. The holding in Re Blockchain

For current purposes, the facts in the case are far less important than the result. While the disputes, misunderstandings and accusations between the parties gave rise to enough issues for the judge to fill an entire law exam, it need only be understood as a dispute about the ownership and handling of an amount of bitcoin.

The key question the learned judge had to answer, therefore, was whether the common law as applied in Australia should recognise bitcoin as personal property.

As we have explained in a previous briefing, there is now an increasing number of cases, across a range of common law jurisdictions, that have had to deal with this question. In broad terms (and as the Law Commission recognised in its Final Report), there is an emerging and deep consensus that crypto-tokens and similar digital assets are capable of being the objects of personal property rights.