Recently, in the process of receiving a consultation involving a virtual currency case, Mr. Xu found that many members of the public have limited knowledge of the concept and knowledge of virtual currency, and are easy to be deceived, so he wrote an article to explain the legal knowledge involving virtual currency, hoping to help the public understand relevant legal knowledge and stay away from illegal crimes.

News coverage

Recently, the Suzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau has successively cracked down on a number of illegal and criminal activities that use the concept of Internet virtual currency to engage in currency speculation, including Zeen community, Daohe community, Xingchen community, Yang community, Tianya community, etc.

The police issued an announcement urging illegal and criminal personnel to voluntarily surrender, which aroused the attention of the society to the illegal and criminal activities caused by virtual currency.

What is virtual currency?

According to Baidu Encyclopedia, virtual currency refers to non-real currency. Well-known virtual currencies such as Baidu Coin of Baidu Company, Q Coin of Tencent Company, Q Point, Shanda Company's bonds, Micro Coin launched by Sina (used in micro-games, Sina reading, etc.), Chivalrous Ingots (used in Chivalrous Road Games), Tattoo Silver (used in Bixue Love Sky Game), popular digital currencies in 2013 are, Bitcoin, Litecoin, Unlimited Coin, Quark Coin, Zeta Coin, BBQ Coin, Penny Coin (Extranet), Invisible Gold Bar, Red Coin, Prime Coin. There are currently hundreds of digital currencies issued around the world. The legend of "bit gold, light silver, unlimited copper, penny aluminum" is popular in the circle.

According to the notices and announcements issued by People's Bank of China and other departments, virtual currency is not issued by monetary authorities, does not have monetary attributes such as legal compensation and compulsory, is not a currency in the true sense, does not have the same legal status as currency, cannot and should not be used as currency in the market, and citizens' investment and trading of virtual currency are not protected by law.

Common online virtual currency

The first category is game currency.

The second category is the special currency issued by the portal or instant messenger service provider for the purchase of services within this website. Such as Tencent's Q coin, etc

The third type of virtual currency on the Internet, such as Bitcoin (BTC), Lite Currency (LTC), etc.

Characteristics of illegal and criminal activities caused by virtual currency

First, from the quantitative point of view

According to incomplete statistics, the number of effective criminal cases involving virtual currencies has increased year by year since 2010, of which more than 350 cases were in 2018 and 2019, as follows:



2. According to incomplete statistics, there are 26 kinds of crimes involved in the case, mainly including: the crime of organizing and leading pyramid schemes, the crime of opening a casino, the crime of fraud, the crime of theft, and the crime of gambling;

The crime of illegally absorbing deposits from the public and illegally obtaining computer information system data; the crime of illegally controlling computer information systems and the crime of fund-raising fraud;

Concealment or concealment of criminal proceeds, criminal proceeds, copyright infringement, illegal business operations; The crime of embezzlement (14), the crime of damaging computer information systems (12), and the crime of credit card fraud

10. Contract fraud 7; The crime of providing programs and tools for intruding into or illegally controlling computer information systems

4; Crimes of aiding information network criminal activities (3); Crimes of infringing on citizens' personal information (5); the crime of misappropriation of funds (4); Extortion (5)

Third, from a geographical point of view

The cases mainly occurred in provinces and cities with relatively high economic levels, and the coastal areas were higher than the hinterland, and the eastern provinces were higher than the western regions.

(This article is translated by software translator for reference only.)