Digital Assets Are Now Legally Property in the UK — Here's the Book Every Commercial Lawyer Needs
On 2 December 2025, English law changed in a way commercial lawyers had been waiting years for: the Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025 received Royal Assent and came into force, confirming that digital assets — crypto-tokens, NFTs, and other electronic items — can be the object of personal property rights under English law, even though they fit neither of the two traditional categories of "things in possession" and "things in action". Based on the Law Commission's 2023 recommendations, the Act formally establishes a third category of personal property for the digital era.
For anyone practising commercial or property law, this is not a peripheral technology update — it is a change to the fundamental taxonomy of property law itself, and it lands directly on the subject matter of The Law of Personal Property, 3rd Edition (Bridge, Gullifer, McMeel & Low, Sweet & Maxwell, 2021).
Why this book is the reference point for the new law
The third edition already added a dedicated chapter on digital assets — anticipating exactly the classification problem the 2025 Act now resolves by statute. Where the Act itself is deliberately short, leaving the courts to work out the boundaries and rights attaching to this new "third category" case by case, this treatise gives the detailed doctrinal framework — ownership, transfer, security interests, tracing, and insolvency treatment — that practitioners will need to apply as that case law develops.
What practitioners are now working through
The Act raises immediate practical questions: how digital assets are owned and transferred, how they are treated on insolvency, how security can be taken over them, and how they pass on death. These are precisely the areas the book's chapters on ownership, security interests, insolvency, and gift/succession were written to address — now with direct statutory relevance rather than purely common-law uncertainty.
Q&A
What is the Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025?
A UK statute, in force since 2 December 2025, confirming that digital assets such as crypto-tokens and NFTs can be the object of personal property rights, even though they don't fit the traditional categories of things in possession or things in action.
How does The Law of Personal Property, 3rd Edition relate to this new Act?
Its dedicated Chapter 8 on digital assets, added in this edition, provides the detailed treatment of ownership, transfer, and security interests that the Act's new statutory "third category" now needs to be applied in practice.
Is this book still the current edition?
Yes — the third edition (December 2021) remains the latest and only edition currently in print from Sweet & Maxwell.
Who should read this book in light of the 2025 Act?
Commercial litigators, insolvency practitioners, banking and finance lawyers, and academics who need the doctrinal foundation for advising on digital assets as personal property.
Does the book only cover digital assets?
No — digital assets are one chapter within a comprehensive 39-chapter treatment of tangible and intangible personal property, including security interests, bailment, insolvency, and conflict of laws.