China's Supreme Court pushes for greater legal protections around digital currency ownership

The top judicial body in China is pushing for the expansion of legal rights around the possession of digital things, including currencies.

The guidance published Wednesday calls for the Chinese judiciary to expand such protections. As noted by CoinDesk's Wolfie Zhao, the document in question doesn't directly tie into cryptocurrencies or define what, precisely, constitutes a digital currency. But it comes as China moves toward the creation of its own digital currency and, as noted by Zhao, a growing body of legal decision-making on the topic of how bitcoin may be treated as a kind of digitized property. 

An English-language press statement from the Supreme Court highlights that He Xiaorong, a member of the judicial committee with China's top court, "noted some new types of properties, such as virtual properties and digital currencies, would be safeguarded" under the envisioned protections.