Ninth Arbitration Court of Appeals: In a landmark decision, the Ninth Arbitration Court of Appeals of Russia has held that a bankrupt person’s cryptocurrency can be included in the debtor’s bankruptcy estate; thereby giving it the status of property with value, albeit indirectly.
The dispute originated from a claim filed to the Ninth Arbitration Court of Appeals by the bankruptcy trustee Alexei Leonov in October 2017. A lower court had initially directed the bankrupt Ilya Tsarkov to disclose the contents of his Blockchain.info wallet as part of the real estate estimation process. Leonov had earlier requested the court to order the transfer of Tsarkov’s Bitcoins into the bankruptcy estate, which was rejected at the time, stating that cryptocurrency cannot be used to pay creditors since “the laws of the Russian Federation do not recognize cryptocurrency as property.” The present ruling however sets a instance which recognizes the potential use of digital assets in contractual agreements.
[Source: Bitcoin News]