#英国高院裁定钱志敏案适用中国法
The UK High Court has ruled that Chinese law, rather than UK law, governs property claims to the 61,000 bitcoins in the case against Zhimin Qian. Judge Mark Turner’s reasoning was cold and direct: the investors were Chinese, the fundraising took place in China, and the harm was suffered in China.
What does this mean? When Qian bought bitcoin in 2014, the average price was just 2,815 yuan. Today, a single bitcoin is worth more than $84,000. Under Chinese law, victims will most likely be able to recover only their “principal plus interest”—the enormous 266-fold increase in value has nothing to do with them.
There are 128,000 victims and 43 billion yuan involved in the case, spanning all 31 provincial-level administrative regions across China. Most are middle-aged or elderly people from smaller cities and towns. What they have been waiting for is not a fair share of the increased value, but to be “paid off at the original price.” One victim said: “They made a fortune with this money, but they’re giving us only a meager amount of interest. Who wouldn’t be furious?”
There are no flaws in the judge’s reasoning, but its consequences are suffocating: the UK government will most likely keep these £3.8 billion worth of bitcoins, and there is no room for criminal asset-recovery cooperation between China and the UK. The legal framework for recovering assets across borders has, in this case, become a cold arithmetic problem.
The victims’ lawyers are appealing, but the road ahead is long. The warning sounded by this ruling goes far beyond this case: when Ponzi schemes disguise themselves as cryptocurrency and flee across borders, the existing law may offer victims nothing more than the words “get your principal back.” And that is nowhere near enough.
The UK High Court has ruled that Chinese law, rather than UK law, governs property claims to the 61,000 bitcoins in the case against Zhimin Qian. Judge Mark Turner’s reasoning was cold and direct: the investors were Chinese, the fundraising took place in China, and the harm was suffered in China.
What does this mean? When Qian bought bitcoin in 2014, the average price was just 2,815 yuan. Today, a single bitcoin is worth more than $84,000. Under Chinese law, victims will most likely be able to recover only their “principal plus interest”—the enormous 266-fold increase in value has nothing to do with them.
There are 128,000 victims and 43 billion yuan involved in the case, spanning all 31 provincial-level administrative regions across China. Most are middle-aged or elderly people from smaller cities and towns. What they have been waiting for is not a fair share of the increased value, but to be “paid off at the original price.” One victim said: “They made a fortune with this money, but they’re giving us only a meager amount of interest. Who wouldn’t be furious?”
There are no flaws in the judge’s reasoning, but its consequences are suffocating: the UK government will most likely keep these £3.8 billion worth of bitcoins, and there is no room for criminal asset-recovery cooperation between China and the UK. The legal framework for recovering assets across borders has, in this case, become a cold arithmetic problem.
The victims’ lawyers are appealing, but the road ahead is long. The warning sounded by this ruling goes far beyond this case: when Ponzi schemes disguise themselves as cryptocurrency and flee across borders, the existing law may offer victims nothing more than the words “get your principal back.” And that is nowhere near enough.