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AH, the beating drums of belated enlightenment.
As of 2 December 2025, the UK’s Property Act (digital assets etc) has been codified into law through Royal Assent, categorising cryptocurrencies, NFTs and their digital cousins into a neat third category of personal property, putting them in line with gold ingots or FTSE shares. It’s hardly the move from a government that has spent years tutting at Bitcoin like a financial plague.
Not that the writing wasn’t on the wall. The US, on track to be the crypto capital, codified it in 2014 via IRS capital gains tax on disposals, like any portfolio asset.
Australia followed suit that year through the ATO, Japan via its 2017 Payment Services Act (calling them “property values”), South Africa by 2014, as intangible assets for inheritance or disputes.
The UK has just become the latest to join the party, but what a difference. Judges and law enforcement at last have clarity on whether pilfered Ethereum qualifies as “property” for hacking redress, while platform crypto becomes inheritable and reclaimable in bankruptcy.
This is Whitehall rolling out the red carpet for crypto firms that moved to friendlier and warmer climes during the FCA’s anti-crypto regime a decade ago. Onshoring? It certainly seems like the UK just got a whole lot sunnier for crypto firms. Mind you, while the UK is patting itself on the back for catching the crypto waves after a string of tsunamis, spare a thought for Jersey, that plucky British Isle barely visible on the map, that has been surfing those waves for over ten years.
In Jersey, Bitcoin and digital assets have been treated as intangible movable property under the civil code for some time. The milestones? Pure gold. Back in 2014, it was nailed in legislative language and, by 10 July, the Jersey Financial Services Commission greenlit the world’s first regulated Bitcoin fund.
Fast-forward to 2023, and Jersey’s virtual assets and VASP definitions slotted straight into its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing playbook, seamless as a Swiss watch.
If the UK’s move feels like a lumbering giant finally tying its laces, Jersey’s the nimble scout which is already whittling Bitcoin fan art with its Swiss Army knives.
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