UK Brings The Property (Digital Assets Etc) Act 2025 Into Force

The UK government brought the Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025 into force on 2 December. The Act is intended to clarify the status of digital assets by confirming that digital assets can attract personal property rights even though they fall outside traditional classifications.

Because digital assets are fundamentally different from both physical assets ('things in possession') and from rights-based assets ('things in action') like debts and financial securities, the Law Commission recommended in 2023 that legislation should be drafted to confirm the existence of a 'third' category of personal property, into which crypto-tokens and potentially other assets could fall.

The Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025, based closely on the Law Commission's draft bill, makes clear that a thing is not prevented from being the object of personal property rights simply because it does not fit into either of the existing categories.