Where the crypto industry is still rejoicing their victories in India and South, the commercial court of Nanterre has ruled that Bitcoin is fiat money in France and is a fungible as well as a consumable asset, even though it is intangible. The ruling was deemed as historic because it was the very first time Bitcoin was recognized in France.
The ruling was a result of a court case between Paymium, a French bitcoin exchange, and BitSpread, an English alternate investment corporation. This was related to a loan return following Bitcoin’s hardfork with Bitcoin Cash(BCH). Paymium is said to be Europe’s very first Bitcoin Exchange.
Bitcoin is fiat money, despite last year’s setbacks
Last year, the regulatory authorities in France made Facebook’s Libra perfectly clear of their intentions of not letting Libra work in France. The authorities were worried that Libra would bring a lot of risks to the financial situation of the country. This was a set back for all cryptocurrencies. However, with the commercial court’s ruling stating that Bitcoin is fiat, money has completely overturned the scenario.
The first dispute concerning the case dated back to 2014 when the English company, BitSpread took a loan of 1000 BTC from Paymium. However, in 2017, Bitcoin’s split gave birth to Bitcoin Cash(BCH). The case revolved around the fact that if the return payment should be made in BTC and BCH(as a result of the split) or just in BTC by the borrower.
The court said that it views Bitcoin as a fungible asset, and thus lending Bitcoin is equivalent to a consumer loan, due to which the complete ownership of the asset was transferred to the borrower, which is BitSpread in this case. With this, the court said that the BCH belongs to the borrower like the shareholders keep the dividends of the shares they own.
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court of India quashed the RBI’s ban on cryptocurrency, and crypto trading was declared legal in South Korea as well. This is a third major victory for the crypto industry in a single week.
Featured image from Pixabay
