MISUSE OF DIGITAL ASSETS: CURRENT LEGISLATION, CHALLENGES AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Jelena Kostić
In 2020, the Republic of Serbia adopted the Law on Digital Assets (Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia no. 153/2020). Legal regulation of the issuance, use and circulation of digital assets is present in a very small number of European countries. Although the 2020 European Union Proposal for a Regulation on Markets in Crypto-assets encourages the regulation of the crypto-assets market at the national level of member states, the question can be raised whether the available mechanisms and means are effective enough in preventing the abuse of digital assets and in protecting the integrity of crypto-assets market. Bearing in mind that the international standards in the field of abuse prevention have been adopted recently, while some are still in the process of being established, we start from the assumption that it will be necessary to additionaly improve both legislation and institutional capacities in the mentioned area at the national level. In the first part of the paper, we first point out the emerging forms of abuse of digital assets, and then we will look at the international standards that define potential prevention mechanisms. After that, the legislation of the Republic of Serbia in the field of prevention of abuses related to digital assets and the crypto-assets market will be analysed. Therefore, the method of content analysis and the dogmatic method dominate in this paper. By applying the mentioned methodology, we try to give recommendations for improving the mechanisms of prevention of abuses at the national level.
Keywords: digital assets, abuse prevention, legislation, challenges, improvement.
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