가상화폐의 금전성 - 대법원 2019도1462 판결(원심 서울중앙지방법원 2018노2816 판결)에 대한 판례 평석 -

In the target case, Supreme Court of Korea concluded that the defendant’s act of receiving bitcoins instead of cash from the victims in a multi-level manner is a fund-raising as defined in the “ACT ON THE REGULATION OF CONDUCTING FUND-RAISING BUSINESS WITHOUT PERMISSION” and a money transaction under ‘ACT ON DOOR-TO-DOOR SALES, ETC’. The issue of this case is whether or not virtual currencies will be accepted as money in certain circumstances. In order to examine it, the concept, legal nature, and regulatory cases of virtual currency were reviewed, focusing on the case of the United States. According to the FinCEN guidelines etc and the “ACT ON REPORTING AND USING SPECIFIED FINANCIAL TRANSACTION INFORMATION” that accepted these guidelines, virtual currencies can be defined as a digitally represented value serving as a medium of exchange and payment as a substitute for legal tender. And virtual currencies can be regarded as a substitute for legal tender or money by its essential nature. Based on this, in the regulatory case of the United States as well, it can be confirmed that virtual currencies are considered to have pecuniary nature when used as a substitute for legal tender. Based on the above logic, in this case, because Bitcoin was used only as a medium of transaction instead of legal tender, it was judged that receiving Bitcoin was the same as actually transacting money. Based on the intrinsic nature of virtual currency, Supreme Court treated virtual currencies as money in the situation and included it as a subject of existing regulation for money transactions. And it can be said that through this judgement, the blind spot of punishment was resolved and concrete legal validity was secured.