The UK Jurisdiction Taskforce (UKJT) published its Report on Control of Digital Assets on 19 March 2026. The Report is non-binding. The Master of the Rolls Sir Geoffrey Vos convened the UKJT under the LawtechUK initiative. A panel of judges, practitioners, and technical experts led by Sir Antony Zacaroli prepared the Report. David Quest KC and Judy Fu were among the contributors, with Judy Fu serving as lead drafter. The Report responds to the Law Commission's 2023 recommendation in its Final Report on Digital Assets for an expert panel on factual control.
The Report situates the analysis within the developing English common law of digital asset property and against the Property (Digital Assets etc) Bill 2024-2025. The Report explains factual control across native blockchain tokens, intermediated custody, layer-2 systems, and account-based stablecoin issuers. It identifies operative concepts including unilateral exclusion, the exclusive ability to deal, knowledge of private keys, multisignature thresholds, smart contract-mediated control, and intermediated custody. The Report distinguishes legal control under property law from factual control under technical implementation. Sections cover key custody, smart contract delegation, validator-mediated systems, and tokenised securities.
The Report reaches custodians, exchanges, prime brokers, validators, smart contract operators, and tokenised asset issuers operating under English law. Custody arrangements may need re-mapping against the Report's control taxonomy to support proprietary claims and insolvency analysis. Insolvency practitioners should reassess client asset segregation under the Report's framing. Drafters of trust, custody, and intermediation agreements should align defined terms with the Report's vocabulary. English-law arbitral tribunals and courts will likely cite the Report when allocating beneficial ownership in disputed token holdings.
The Report is non-binding and does not displace statutory provisions or the developing case law. The Property (Digital Assets etc) Bill 2024-2025 separately establishes a third category of personal property and remains pending in Parliament without Royal Assent. The interaction between the Report's factual control concept and Article 8 of the Hague Convention on the Law Applicable to Certain Rights in Respect of Securities Held with an Intermediary is not yet settled. Cross-border conflict-of-laws questions remain open.
Licentium advises crypto custodians, tokenised asset issuers, and digital asset funds on English-law custody, control allocation, and insolvency planning through a partner network. Contact us to discuss custody arrangement reviews, trust documentation, or proprietary claim strategy. Work we undertake includes English-law custody opinions, tokenisation transaction structuring, client asset segregation reviews, insolvency planning, conflict-of-laws analysis, and dispute resolution support.
Source: UK Jurisdiction Taskforce, Report on Control of Digital Assets, 19 March 2026, https://lawtechuk.io/ukjt/
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