Cryptocurrency as a criminal legal category in Russian law: concept, meaning and problems of legislative regulation

The subject of the study of this article is the theoretical, legal and practical aspects of the analysis of cryptocurrencies used in the commission of certain types of criminal offenses, both financial and otherwise of various kinds within the framework of Russian criminal law policy. The purpose of the research is to characterize the current problems of understanding cryptocurrencies in the criminal law sense, as well as to develop a set of measures to improve current legislation in this area. The author characterizes the polysemantic essence of the term cryptocurrency itself, its volatility, and also proves the practical need to recognize cryptocurrencies as the subject and means of committing crimes. A significant theoretical and regulatory framework has been studied in the context under consideration. The author provides examples from Russian judicial practice to confirm his position. In this work, the method of system analysis, normative-legal, dialectical, statistical, logical, formal-legal and other methods that are widely recognized in modern legal science were actively used. The importance of using certain conceptual regulatory documents of regulatory branches of law, namely civil, banking and others, in the process of improving the current law, is emphasized for the process of proper qualification of certain types of criminal encroachments, illegal use of cryptocurrencies as a quasi-financial instrument. In order to form a uniform judicial practice, as well as eliminate existing contradictions, the author proposes updating the "basic legal structures" of the current regulatory legal acts of the Russian Federation and certain provisions in the Resolutions of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in the field of criminal analysis of cryptocurrencies in the mechanism of committing crimes, which together constitute the novelty of scientific research. The scope of the results provides for the possibility of practical use of the proposed recommendations in the process of improving current legislation.

cryptocurrency, crime, anonymity, object of criminal encroachment, theft, financial transactions, digital currency, means of payment, property, fraud