Account as an inheritance – Newspaper Kommersant No. 205 (7406) of 11/07/2022
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Experts from the Center for Strategic Research (CSR) have proposed a number of initiatives aimed at legally assigning economic value to digital accounts. Thus, they recommend thinking about the inheritance and inclusion of such assets in the bankruptcy estate, as well as on limiting the right of digital service providers to alienate them. Lawyers note that practice in this area is ahead of legal regulation, and support the creation of new opportunities. The Ministry of Economy told Kommersant that the proposals of the CSR could be taken into account in the formation of legislative initiatives.
CSR experts prepared a report “Virtual Assets: DAO, Tokenization of Corporate Rights and Digital Accounts”, dedicated to the issues of their regulation (available to Kommersant). Special attention is drawn to the initiatives of experts regarding digital accounts – unlike the first two, they are not considered through the prism of crypto assets. At the same time, interest in them as a type of virtual asset, as explained in the CSR, is due to the widespread use in the modern world and the growing economic value. “There is no legal definition of digital accounts in Russian legislation,” the report says, although for practical purposes there is even a classification system for them: these are business and personal, mail, gaming, payment system and online service accounts, etc. Experts suggest enshrine in Russian law the definition of a digital account, taking into account foreign experience.
The CSR also recommends thinking about excluding the right of digital service providers to limit the possibility of alienating digital accounts. Experts note that Russian and foreign legislation does not regulate the issue of transferring digital accounts to third parties. User agreements contain provisions that limit this possibility.
In addition, the CSR proposes to allow the inclusion of business pages in social networks in the bankruptcy estate. There are no such examples in Russian judicial practice, the report notes, — probably, the participants in the bankruptcy case fail to prove the commercial value of such accounts. Experts also propose to allow the inclusion of digital accounts that do not contain information of a confidential or other similar nature (for example, gaming ones) as part of the inheritance mass by default, and containing them in a will. “The proposals for a digital account may well have a continuation. Already, digital accounts are actively involved in civil circulation,” says Stepan Khantimirov, a lawyer at the Asterisk Law Office. Most likely, court practice will soon begin to include digital accounts in the estate, since the market value of some can reach tens of millions of rubles, he believes.
“The problem will become more and more acute with the development of digital markets and the metaverse,” says Ekaterina Smirnova, partner at the D&A Partners consulting bureau. Already today, many digital assets have not only equaled in value with analog ones, but also surpassed them, she notes, and ignoring the possibility of digital accounts turnover means ignoring the digital reality.
The Ministry of Economy notes that the proposals of the center “are of interest from the point of view of regulating DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations; decentralized autonomous organizations for coordinated actions.— “b”) and ownership of digital accounts – they can be taken into account when forming legislative initiatives.
DAOs allow using crypto technologies to coordinate the actions of many people in the common interest, points out the president of the CSR Vladislav Onishchenko. It should be noted that the interest of CSR experts in DAO is due to their growing popularity for investment – in total they have already accumulated more than $10 billion from 1.7 million investors. At the same time, DAOs operate using smart contracts, are decentralized and managed by the community, without having a central authority. The current legal qualification of DAO as a simple partnership does not meet the needs of the market, DAO participants need a “corporate shield” in the form of a legal entity that limits their liability, the CSR believes, recommending that DAO be regulated as a type of LLC with specific legal status.
Lawyers are ambivalent about the idea. So, according to Stepan Khantimirov, the authorities will not approve the introduction of DAO. “As a product of the blockchain, DAOs assume complete independence from anyone, even from the state,” he explains. In turn, Ekaterina Smirnova considers the initiative to be the right decision. “First of all, this approach makes it possible to distinguish between a DAO and a simple partnership agreement, this is really important for business, and not just for lawyers,” she points out.
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