It is illegal to buy and sell digital currency. Although digital currency is not banned in China at present, it is illegal to use it in transactions because it does not recognize the legitimacy and monetary attributes of digital encrypted currency. China's Law on the People's Bank of China stipulates that the legal tender of the People's Republic of China (PRC) (PRC) is RMB. No unit or individual may refuse to pay all public and private debts of People's Republic of China (PRC) (China) in RMB.

The central bank said that the so-called "digital currency" on the market at present is not a legitimate digital currency:

The Bureau of Currency, Gold and Silver of the Central Bank issued the Risk Warning on Issuing or Promoting digital currency in the Name of the People's Bank of China in official website, saying that recently, some enterprises fraudulently used the name of the Central Bank to mark relevant digital products as "authorized by the People's Bank of China", or lied that the Central Bank issued the digital currency promotion team in an attempt to deceive the public and reap huge profits.

Criteria for Determining the Illegality of Crimes in digital currency

Based on the decentralization and anonymity of digital currency and the constitutive requirements of illegal cognition, the judgment of illegal cognition in digital currency should be made in the following order and content.

First of all, traders in digital currency should understand the relevant laws and regulations. On the one hand, as far as legal tender digital currency is concerned, it is essentially a legal tender in digital form, so the existing laws and regulations on legal tender should be observed. According to relevant regulations, China's legal digital currency is digital RMB. At present, the People's Bank of China has launched a pilot project for the issuance and circulation of digital RMB, and granted legal status to digital RMB in Article 19 of the Law of the People's Bank of China (Draft for Comment). If the exposure draft is passed, China will supervise the legal digital currency according to this law, and traders in the legal digital currency should clearly understand the legal system of digital currency mainly based on the Law of the People's Bank of China. On the other hand, as far as private digital currency is concerned, it has obvious decentralization, which makes it different from virtual currency. Private digital currency is not supervised by network operators, but by traders themselves, so the legal supervision system of virtual currency or virtual property cannot be directly applied to private digital currency transactions. However, at present, there is no legal norm about private digital currency in China, and we can only judge the illegality of private currency transactions by referring to the applicable legal norms about virtual currency and relevant policies about private digital currency.

Secondly, digital currency traders should clearly realize the harmfulness of related behaviors to society. Traders in digital currency, even if they don't fully understand the provisions of the People's Bank of China Law on legal digital currency, should also know that they can't forge, issue or raise the legal digital currency privately based on common sense, which will endanger the national financial order. If there is similar behavior, it can be concluded that the actor can realize the harm of this behavior to society. At present, according to the Announcement of the People's Bank of China on Preventing the Financing Risks of Token Issuance, private digital currency trading is prohibited in the domestic market, and private currency trading market registration and RMB exchange are not allowed. Private digital currency traders cannot open an exchange and exchange RMB through the domestic bank payment system privately, and need to use an overseas account for secondary settlement. At this time, the actor should realize that this kind of behavior is prohibited by the state, and once implemented, it will undermine the national financial supervision order.

Finally, it is necessary to judge whether digital currency traders have a wrong understanding of illegality. Specifically: First, whether digital currency traders have objective knowledge of the law. This can be identified mainly by the actor's education, professional status and living environment. For those with bachelor degree or above in finance and related majors, their ability to acquire and understand digital currency trading knowledge is higher than that of the general public, while similar people are the staff of financial institutions and government departments involved in financial supervision, and they are highly sensitive to the changes of policies and regulations in digital currency. For the above two types of people, it can be presumed that they have the ability to recognize illegality. Second, did digital currency traders try to find the relevant legal norms in digital currency? When digital currency traders are uncertain about digital currency trading, they should apply to the People's Bank of China and the government department in charge of financial supervision for an administrative reply to the legality of digital currency trading. As for the effectiveness of consulting with commercial banks and experts and getting answers, because it lacks credibility and authority compared with the government's administrative reply, it cannot be considered that efforts have been made to find out the relevant legal norms in digital currency. In fact, most municipal districts have branches of the People's Bank of China and government departments in charge of financial supervision. Therefore, it is of practical significance to verify whether digital currency traders are trying to find out the relevant laws and regulations in digital currency. In a word, the judgment of digital currency traders' misunderstanding and breaking the law should conform to the "three normal" judgment of common sense, common sense and common sense.

Legal basis:

Law of the People's Bank of China of the People's Republic of China Article 16 The legal tender of People's Republic of China (PRC) is RMB. No unit or individual may refuse to pay all public and private debts of People's Republic of China (PRC) (China) in RMB. Article 18 Renminbi shall be uniformly printed and issued by the People's Bank of China. When issuing a new version of RMB, the People's Bank of China shall announce the issuing time, denomination, pattern, style and specifications.