The last decade has seen a rapid growth of innovations in the field of IT technologies, one of the consequences of which was a change in the approach to the payment system – for the first time in human history, electronic records rather than real funds were provided in exchange for goods and services, which made it possible to represent money and currencies in a virtual form. The emergence of cryptocurrencies and the development of electronic payment systems have created the basis for the emergence of digital currencies, a technological innovation that performs the exchange functions of money, but operates outside the modern banking sector and has developed outside the supervision of monetary regulators. Since the first digital currency, bitcoin, was created, the digital currency market has been growing rapidly and has already become significant for the global economy. Currently, digital currencies are widely used in the economic and legal environment of Ukraine. Despite certain attempts by the national legislator to regulate relations in the field of digital currencies, a number of aspects remain unaddressed by the legislator, there is legal uncertainty regarding activities related to digital currencies, there is no regulation of the procedure for the activities of entities providing services in the field of digital currencies, and, most importantly, the terminology for defining the definition of digital currencies in the legal plane is not regulated at the doctrinal level. This is important in the context of the development of administrative law and the related phenomenon of "digital currency". The purpose of the paper is to study the theoretical and legal issues of defining digital currencies as an administrative and legal phenomenon. The paper examines the definition of the category «digital currency» – a digital object intended for payment functions contained in the form of a set of electronic data (digital code or designation) in an information network operating on the basis of distributed ledger technology, the circulation of which is regulated by administrative law. The analysis has shown that there are numerous approaches to understanding legal relations in the field of digital currency circulation. These relations are based on the principles of discretion and equality of the parties with a mandatory method of legal regulation. Therefore, administrative legal relations in the field of digital currencies are social relations regulated by administrative law regarding the possession, use and disposal of digital currencies in accordance with the rules of administrative law.
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