The English law of equity is growing in value as the courts deal with digital assets, writes Brian Patrick Bolger
- Asserts that modern equitable principles may become the primary legal machinery for dealing with digital assets.
In March 2026, the English High Court delivered one of the most important digital asset judgments yet seen in English private law. In Ping Fai Yuen v Li & another [2026] EWHC 532 (KB), Mr Justice Cotter confirmed something increasingly accepted after the Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025: Bitcoin is property. Yet the court simultaneously drew a sharp boundary around the traditional tort of conversion, holding that cryptocurrency, despite being property, cannot be ‘converted’ in the orthodox common law sense because it remains intangible.
The decision matters not merely because it concerns stolen Bitcoin, but because it reveals the direction in which English law is moving. The future of digital asset moves to equity: therefore in constructive trusts and proprietary restitution there will be a move to tracing, fiduciary remedies and following unjust enrichment. The court permitted
