Review of 2013: Ordinary people have the freedom to participate in BTC

The risk of Over-the-counter Trading is objectively present, try to conduct transactions of Virtual Money within a reasonable Compliance range.

Author: Wei Fuhai, Senior Lawyer at Shanghai Mankun Law Firm

When buying and selling Virtual Money, if the transaction is successful, you may worry that you are the perpetrator of a crime; if the transaction fails, you may worry that you are the subject of a crime.

Recently, some players of Virtual Money have consulted us, and due to inconvenient reasons for disclosure, they need to purchase some USD (USDT) for their own use. They found a middleman and chatted quite well about the unit price of Virtual Money, the quantity of the transaction, and the transaction method. However, after transferring 200,000 RMB at 10 p.m., the other party immediately became unresponsive, and none of the promised USDT was transferred. This caused the fren to have a sleepless night.

Don’t go to the police, 200,000 is still a lot of money; go to the police, how should I explain this to the police? Will the police arrest me too? He was very distressed and came to consult us.

Similar situations are very common in the process of buying and selling Virtual Money. Because there are still some differences between the online world and the real world, it is not possible to conduct face-to-face transactions, relying solely on a few words exchanged in the online world to judge whether the other party is reliable. Therefore, it is very easy for the other party to disappear after the customer has made the payment.

Before talking about how to do it, I want to say that some people do have extraordinary courage compared to ordinary people. Virtual Money is like a Schrödinger’s cat in China. In addition, with scammers rampant on Twitter and communication tools represented by Telegram, there are indeed people who have the courage to engage in Over-the-counter Trading.

Speaking of which, if something like this really happens, what should we do?

Can I sue in court?

Going to court for a lawsuit is also known as civil litigation. In civil litigation, firstly, we do not know the true identity information of the person who is engaging in the transaction with us, nor do we know whether the other party is currently in China or abroad. Therefore, this involves how to determine an accurate defendant and whether the law applicable is Chinese law or foreign law.

So, mentioning civil litigation still has certain issues, but even if these issues exist, it does not mean that the situation of purchasing Virtual Money cannot be defended through civil litigation.

Can I file a criminal report?

In addition to civil litigation, we can also protect our rights and interests by reporting a crime. What are the advantages of reporting a crime in the case of being deceived in the purchase of Virtual Money?

First of all, although the state’s public power conducts criminal investigations, it is much easier for us to try to find the identity information of the defendant ourselves; and some evidence and related criminal facts are definitely much clearer if the public security organs investigate than if we do it ourselves; and the power to investigate criminal cases is exercised by the public security organs, the power to prosecute is exercised by the procuratorate, and the power to adjudicate is of course exercised by the court. You see, in criminal cases, as long as we report the case, the public security organs will file the case, and we don’t need to worry about anything afterwards. The state will take care of it for you, which makes us much more at ease.

But now there is a practical issue. Since the Central Bank issued a notification denying the currency attribute of Virtual Money, some judicial authorities have taken an extreme approach, even denying the virtual property attribute of Virtual Money, and punishing the theft of Virtual Money as a crime of damaging computer information systems.

As far as I am concerned, this is a judgment that is extremely inconsistent with the spirit of legislation and legal principles. Therefore, I have previously written an article titled ‘Stealing someone else’s BTC is not considered theft?’ to discuss this issue. Interested friends can take a look.

That being said, once the public security agency files a case and apprehends the criminal suspect, regardless of whether the final verdict is reasonable, or whether there is any restitution for the victim’s losses in the sentence, at the very least, as victims, we can breathe a sigh of relief and make the people who deceived us pay the price of losing their freedom. After all, life is precious, and the price of love is even higher. If it is for the sake of freedom, both can be abandoned.

Correct posture for reporting

So, getting back to the point, since I encourage the victims to report to the public security organs to safeguard their rights and interests, how should they report the case? Take a look at an article I wrote before, I have written a detailed article ‘Network Investment Fraud, How to File a Criminal Complaint?’, teaching victims how to report the case and safeguard their legitimate rights and interests.

Simply put, don’t go to petition right away. Before reporting the case, make sure to prepare a report and evidence materials that will be needed for the case, so that the accepted public security organ has no reason not to issue us with a receipt for accepting the report and corresponding legal documents. Although this article is about being cheated in online investment, the process of reporting the case is similar after excluding the crime charge.

Legal Advice

Finally, it must be said that the risk of Over-the-counter Trading objectively exists, whether it is being deceived, receiving black Usdt, or having unclean funds frozen, all of which are not what we want to face. We should try to conduct Virtual Money transactions within the reasonable scope of Compliance (although this statement may sound like a truism to some, but I still have to say it).