Contract оf Custody оf Virtual Assets (Cryprto Custody) According to the Legislation of Ukraine

Abstract

The work examines the issues of legal regulation of the virtual asset storage contract in Ukraine, taking into account the provisions of the recently adopted Law of Ukraine "On Virtual Assets". The relevance of this topic is due to the rapid spread in the fields of economy, science, art, etc. of relations with virtual assets and the lack of their proper and sufficient legal regulation. The purpose of the work is to solve the problems related to finding out the ability of a virtual asset to be the subject of a custody agreement, determining its value characteristics that determine the need to ensure its safety, and conducting proper qualification of "custody" contracts that are used in relations with virtual assets. With the help of selected research methods (dialectical, comparative legal, formal legal, method of analysis and synthesis), the main features of an object new for private law were determined, which determine its value for turnover and the specificity of use, which is reflected in the possibility of application to it certain contractual structures, in particular, a storage agreement. On the basis of the analysis of the practice of using this contract and the study of the legal nature of the specified relationships, a conclusion was made about the doctrinal impossibility of applying the construction of the custody contract to the latter. At the same time, the need to protect and protect the rights of the owner of a virtual asset from illegal encroachments by third parties is an urgent problem, which is due to the popularity of virtual assets and their inflated cost. Taking into account the peculiarities of various types of virtual assets, it is possible to assert different volumes and content of the category of safekeeping as part of the subject of the storage contract. Therefore, there is a need for the correct qualification of those contractual structures that are currently used as contracts for the storage of virtual assets. And the need to define such a contract that would ensure the safety of the virtual asset/virtual asset key, taking into account the characteristics of the latter. It is emphasized the need to research and rethink the paradigm of applying the custody agreement only to material objects of civil legal relations.