Payment Tokens in the Succession Law

Abstract

Tokens are a specific category of digital assets and their diversity, value and significance for the economy continuously grows. Considering their legal nature, tokens are digital representations of a certain right or value incorporated in a form of dataset on the distributed ledgers (DLT). The subtype of tokens often called payment tokens are in the scope of the analysis - these tokens have their intrinsic fluctuating value and can be used for bartering (such as bitcoin). Even though they are widely used in commerce, their civil law status is unclear. In the absence of rules regulating their status, it is necessary to analyse them in the context of general civil law rules to determine whether they could be an object of a subjective rights. Specifically, in this context, it is analysed whether the payment tokens belonging to a deceased person can be a part of the estate and, consequently, whether the heirs (as well as other persons) could obtain and exercise any rights over these assets.