School of Law professor advises House of Lords on crypto-assets

Professor Duncan Sheehan gave oral evidence to the Special Public Bill Committee for the Property (Digital Assets etc) Bill on 12 December 2024.

The long title of the Bill is: ‘to make provision about the types of things that are capable of being objects of personal property rights’.

The Bill was introduced into Parliament in September on the recommendation of the Law Commission and seeks to ensure that digital assets such as bitcoin can be recognised as property even if they are neither things in possession nor things in action. It therefore implicitly recognises the existence in English law of a third category of personal property, the so-called ‘tertium quid’.

Professor Sheehan gave evidence based on his current and past research on the private law relating to crypto-assets. He said such digital assets are already recognised as property in English law and there is no realistic prospect of any court changing that position.

However, he argued that there was no third category of English personal property law. Everything recognised as property is either a thing in possession or a thing in action and that digital assets should therefore be seen as things in action, as they are in Singapore and Australia.

Professor Sheehan says:

The Bill is unnecessary and counter-productive. Bitcoin and other crypto-assets are clearly property in English law already. The Bill though legislates that courts may recognise a thing as property in English law if it is neither a chose in possession or a chose in action and so recognises a third category of personal property. Choses in possession are tangible assets which can be touched like tables. Choses in action are intangible assets that cannot be touched like debts, company shares and copyright. Everything that exists can either be touched, or not. There is no third in-between category. The bill is counter-productive in that by encouraging courts to see assets like bitcoin as a strange third thing rather than as a chose in action, it leads them into serious legal errors, and this is already happening even before the Bill is passed into law. It should be withdrawn.

The transcript of his session can be read here, his written evidence can be found here, and the session is on Parliament live here.

Professor Sheehan's contributions to this evidence session highlight the School of Law's commitment to impactful academic research and its pivotal role in addressing contemporary legal issues.

Professor Sheehan co-hosted a conference in Leeds on digital assets in May 2024, which you can read about here. He is the Director of the Centre for Business Law and Practice and is the President of the Society of Legal Scholars. He will be hosting the Society of Legal Scholars’ annual conference at the University of Leeds in September 2025.

A forthcoming paper: “Third Things, Tracing and Crypto-Tokens” in the Law Quarterly Review (2025) 141 LQR, will be published in July.