I spent 440,000 yuan to buy a mining machine but did not receive it. The court ruled that the mining machine has property attributes and the sales contract is legal and valid

According to Xinhua Daily, on the 28th, the Suzhou Industrial Park Court concluded a dispute involving a Bitcoin mining machine.

Bitcoin is a virtual currency. A Bitcoin mining machine is a computer with a specialized "mining" chip, which usually works by burning a graphics card and consumes a lot of electricity. People who intend to earn Bitcoin are called "miners." Miners who solve a special solution to an equation in the open source software provided by the designer through a Bitcoin mining machine can get a specific number of Bitcoin rewards.

In April last year, Chang bought a Bitcoin mining machine from Chen, paying a total of more than 440,000 yuan. Chen ordered 220 Bitcoin mining machines from the owner Gong and paid the full price. According to the agreement, Gong would deliver the machines directly to Chang. However, since Chen and Gong still had other debts to be settled, Gong used the payment to offset the previous debts and refused to deliver the goods. Chang then filed a lawsuit in court with Gong as the defendant and Chen as the third party, demanding Gong to return the payment.

As early as September 2017, the People's Bank of China jointly issued the "Notice on Preventing the Risks of Token Issuance and Financing" with multiple ministries and commissions, which clearly stated that "raising so-called virtual currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum from investors is essentially an act of illegal public financing without approval, and no organization or individual may illegally engage in token issuance and financing activities." So are Bitcoin mining machine transactions still protected by law?

The Park Court held that, unlike Bitcoin itself, the Bitcoin mining machine involved in the transaction is a machine used to calculate and generate Bitcoin, which has property attributes. my country's current laws and regulations do not prohibit the sale of Bitcoin mining machines, so the sales contract was deemed legal and valid. However, because there was no sales contract relationship between Chang and Gong, the court dismissed Chang's lawsuit. (Meng Xu)