Introduction

0.01 The reason that fitting virtual currency into modern monetary law is so difficult is that the high water mark of monetary legal theory more or less coincided with the high water mark of the gold standard. Thus, the old masters were broadly in no doubt as to what money was. Any of them, if asked, could have picked up a gold coin of some denomination or other and demonstrated that this, ultimately, was what they meant when they spoke of money. It bore the stamp of a sovereign issuing authority, was of a weight and fineness broadly consistent with its monetary...