Nature of Crypto Assets
Decentralized cryptocurrencies store value and can be used for settlements among groups of individuals. Simultaneously, they have the features of speculative assets with prices supported only by investor confidence, but they are not securities or bonds. The general basis is that a payment token is negotiable if it contains an unconditional promise or order to pay a sum of money and gives its holder a claim on the issuer or a right of redemption on the reserve assets backing the value of the payment token. Bitcoin and Ethereum are created based on cryptography and create no obligations for the person to whom they are issued; furthermore, the obligated person is unknown and cannot be identified. Former owners of cryptocurrencies are not liable to new owners and do not guarantee that Bitcoins will be freely exchanged for money or goods.
Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc., may not be treated as money or securities, but they store value for their users which makes them similar to goods. “cryptocurrency is not a means of payment in the sense of being a regulated currency issued by a government but has the fundamental characteristic of intangible property as an identifiable object of value.”
