ECONOMIC AND LEGAL PRINCIPLES OF INTRODUCING VIRTUAL ASSETS INTO CIVIL CIRCULATION IN THE CONCEPT OF REFORMING CIVIL LEGISLATION IN UKRAINE

Abstract

The study focuses on the conceptual, theoretical, empirical and methodological foundations of economic and legal principles for introducing virtual assets into civil circulation, as part of the reform of civil legislation in Ukraine. Methodology. General and special methods of cognition were employed throughout the study. The dialectical method was employed to differentiate the nature and varieties of virtual and digital assets in terms of their economic and legal basis. The analysis identified the characteristic features of virtual assets, digital things, and other digital objects in view of current and prospective Ukrainian civil legislation and scientific research of a legal and economic nature. The synthesis created the prerequisites for generalizing the characteristic features of digital objects in their diversity, taking into account the classical approach to determining the nature of civil rights and an innovative approach to their determination. The formal-legal method provided an opportunity to correctly interpret the content of international and Ukrainian current and prospective legislation and judicial practice, which determine the legal regime of digital objects. The purpose of the article is to determine the economic and legal principles of introducing virtual assets into civil circulation in the concept of reforming civil legislation in Ukraine. The findings of the study demonstrated that, within the context of the information era, society was confronted with the challenge of formulating a response to numerous challenges of diverse origins. Among these challenges, the introduction of digital objects into civil circulation emerged as a primary concern. The present study established the foundations for the delineation of prospective enhancements to civil legislation with regard to the legal regulation of social relations concerning digital objects of various etymologies. Conclusion. It is argued that virtual assets in modern society effectively reproduce the achievements of the information gap of its existence, a proposition that is fully consistent with the formational approach to the characterisation of the development of humanity. It has been demonstrated that the influence of information, and its digital form of presentation, exerts a significant impact on macroeconomic indicators of societal and state development. The following global trends in the digitalisation of economies and society have been noted: the development of entrepreneurial innovations; increased production productivity; intensification of the labour market; activation of globalisation processes; global and regional economic growth; improvement of various aspects of societal, business and state life processes; and the creation of an optimal space for satisfying private interests and forming a public-private partnership compromise mechanism. Analysing the digitalisation of all spheres of social life as a process of introducing information and telecommunications products into the economy has revealed the formation of a set of measures by the state and society in response to the needs of the information age in the development of civilisation. Alongside organisational, socio-economic, technological, material and technical, financial and resource measures, it has been established that legal instruments are of the greatest importance in this context. Among these legal instruments, the mechanisms for determining the legal regime of digital objects are of primary importance. It is noted that the introduction of digital (virtual) assets into the legal field is primarily socio-economically justified and is driven by the need to establish public order and law in the area of implementing the content of social relations, in which various digital products act as objects. The legal nature of these digital objects is determined by comparing them with the categories of "digital good", "digital thing" and "digital environment". The standardisation of the specified terms in the current and prospective civil legislation of Ukraine is analysed, which made it possible to note the problems of legal regulation of private relations, the objects of which are digital goods. The approach of decomposing the legal nature of a digital good in the context of its perception as program code—that is, in a purely technical (logical-mathematical) sense with a digital basis—or as a property or non-property good (e.g., cryptocurrency, NFTs, digitised drawings on websites, digital signatures, etc.) that satisfies the relevant consumer interests, is significant for private law science. The discussion on determining the place of digital objects among other goods within the scope of civil law is supported, taking into account the established classification of such goods as tangible or intangible, property or non-property, and real or obligatory. Proposals are made to supplement the existing draft of the updated Civil Code of Ukraine with relevant provisions.