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Virtual currency trading-type illegal fund-raising cases show characteristics that are very different from traditional illegal fund-raising cases in terms of crime identification, and have caused confusion in practice. As a direct fundraising object, mainstream virtual currency does not belong to "funds", but its actual "quasi-currency" nature makes it still consistent with the statutory requirement that "funds" are the objects of illegal fund-raising; in the context of virtual currency transactions being expressly prohibited, the logical flaw of determining "illegality" based on "without permission" is prominent, and using "violation of regulations is illegal" as an independent basis for identification is in line with legal principles and practical needs; setting a payment obligation for oneself is the core essence of "inducement", and only declaring that the currency value will rise without setting a bottom-line obligation should not be considered to have the characteristics of "inducement"; in view of the abnormality of the abnormally high returns promised in such cases, even if the funds raised are used for production and business activities, the establishment of the purpose of illegal possession cannot be directly ruled out.

In May 2021, the State Council's "Regulations on the Prevention and Disposal of Illegal Fund-raising" (hereinafter referred to as the "2021 Regulations") included the behavior of absorbing funds in the name of virtual currency in the scope of disposal. In February 2022, the revised Supreme People's Court's "Interpretation on Several Issues Concerning the Specific Application of Laws in the Trial of Criminal Cases of Illegal Fund-raising" (hereinafter referred to as the "Illegal Fund-raising Interpretation") also clearly added new types of illegal fundraising behaviors such as virtual currency transactions, providing a clear basis for punishing such crimes in accordance with the law. Compared with traditional illegal fundraising crimes, illegal fundraising carried out through virtual currency transactions shows obvious differences in the judicial determination of the crime composition. How to solve the normative problems of this new type of crime through theoretical interpretation or even revision within the framework of the principle of legality of crime and punishment and the theory of crime composition is still a confusion that has not yet been resolved by the judicial practice department.

Using "virtual currency" and "virtual coin" as keywords, we searched the criminal judgment documents for the crime of illegal absorption of public deposits and the crime of fund-raising fraud through the China Judgment Documents Network. As of November 30, 2023, there were 139 articles (including 92 articles for illegal absorption of public deposits and 47 articles for fund-raising fraud). Based on the sorting and analysis of the above cases, it can be found that compared with traditional fund-raising cases, virtual currency trading-based illegal fund-raising cases have the following prominent problems in judicial identification:

The main criminal subject of this type of case is usually the issuer of virtual currency. The perpetrator raises funds by issuing self-developed virtual currency, or raises mainstream virtual currency such as Bitcoin and Tether and then cashes it out to ultimately achieve the purpose of financing. In most cases of financing through the issuance of virtual currency, the main form of currency exchange is currency exchange, that is, the perpetrator issues new virtual currency in exchange for mainstream virtual currency held by investors. Therefore, strictly speaking, the perpetrator directly absorbs mainstream virtual currency rather than deposits. The view that virtual currency is not the object of illegal fundraising is mainly based on the following two reasons: First, the interpretation of the Criminal Law has expanded the object of illegal fundraising from deposits to funds, "it is not appropriate to further expand the scope of 'funds' to virtual currency and other property", "in practice, there is no precedent for identifying the act of absorbing property interests other than real currency as fundraising". Second, mainstream virtual currencies such as Bitcoin are only virtual commodities in my country and do not have the status of legal tender. Therefore, the act of collecting virtual currency will not infringe on the financial order and does not meet the object elements of the crime of illegal fundraising. There is no doubt that only by clarifying the legal attributes of mainstream virtual currency and its actual function in virtual currency financing activities can the relevant issues be solved.

"Illegality" and "inducement" also have obvious particularities in the judicial determination of such cases. Among the above 139 cases, 112 judgments did not specifically state "illegality"; 27 judgments had statements such as "without approval from relevant departments in accordance with the law" in the part of ascertaining facts, but only one of them listed the corresponding evidence, that is, in Liu's case of illegally absorbing public deposits, the judgment proved that the bureau had not issued a financial license to the defendant through "a letter issued by the Hunan Regulatory Bureau of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission". However, the 2017 "Announcement on Preventing the Risks of Token Issuance and Financing" (hereinafter referred to as the "2017 Announcement") issued by the central bank and other ministries and commissions has actually banned virtual currency trading activities in China, so is there still a saying of "without approval from relevant departments in accordance with the law"?

Regarding the determination of "inducement", there are mainly three types of profit promises in cases of illegal fund-raising involving virtual currency transactions: first, claiming that the new virtual currency issued has room for appreciation or application prospects, but not promising to repurchase and protect the principal; second, claiming that the new virtual currency has room for appreciation and promising to repurchase and protect the principal, or promising to pay relatively fixed profits; third, combining static and dynamic profits, that is, promising to make profits through the above-mentioned speculation or investment, and also to obtain commission income through the development of downlines. The differences in practice are mainly concentrated on the determination of the first situation mentioned above, and have led to different judgments in the same case, as shown in Table 1.

The purpose of illegal possession is the key to distinguishing the crime of fund-raising fraud from the crime of illegally absorbing public deposits. However, in some cases sentenced for the crime of fund-raising fraud, the key facts used to determine the purpose of illegal possession also exist in other cases of illegally absorbing public deposits, or the factual basis for excluding the determination of the purpose of illegal possession in some cases of illegally absorbing public deposits also exists in some cases characterized as fund-raising fraud. Differences in identification ideas lead to different judgments in the same case, as shown in Table 2.

Table 2 Comparison of typical cases where differences in the identification of “illegal possession” led to different judgments

FATF (Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering) defines virtual currency as "a digital representation of value that can be traded digitally and has the functions of a medium of exchange, a unit of account and a store of value, but does not have the status of a legal tender". Virtual currency is not issued by monetary authorities and is generally not legal tender or compulsory. Although most countries have not granted it the status of a legal tender, mainstream virtual currencies such as Bitcoin have actually served as a means of payment in many areas of international trade. 40% of countries around the world also have a positive attitude towards Bitcoin and recognize its legitimacy as a financial product. In 2013, the central bank and other ministries and commissions made it clear in the "Notice on Preventing Bitcoin Risks" that "Bitcoin is a specific virtual commodity that does not have the same legal status as currency and cannot and should not be circulated and used as currency in the market". In subsequent policy documents, the position that "currency does not have the same legal status as legal tender" has been reiterated many times.

But we must also see that mainstream virtual currencies actually assume or play some of the functions of currency. There is a clear exchange ratio between mainstream virtual currencies such as Bitcoin and legal tender, and they can be freely exchanged for multiple legal tenders through virtual currency trading platforms, and have become one of the payment methods recognized by more and more commercial institutions in the international market. Some virtual currencies are even directly linked to international currencies. For example, Tether (USDT) was once linked to the US dollar, and users can use USDT to exchange USD at a 1:1 ratio at any time. The high degree of liquidity and pricing functions actually possessed by mainstream virtual currencies have obviously exceeded the functional scope of general commodities, and legal non-recognition cannot conceal their actual "quasi-currency" nature. Therefore, we believe that mainstream virtual currencies are a special commodity with the nature of "quasi-currency". Their non-monetary legal attributes and their actual specific monetary functions are two aspects that we must take into account when judging the degree of compatibility between virtual currencies and illegal fundraising objects.

The 2017 announcement clearly stated that it is not allowed to engage in the exchange business between legal currency and virtual currency, or between virtual currency and each other. However, due to the international circulation of virtual currency and the high convenience of exchange, virtual currency exchange has not been effectively banned in my country. It is just that the relevant business activities have been forced to move from the surface to the underground. This is also an important reason why virtual currency financing activities have not stopped due to the ban in practice. Since mainstream virtual currency cannot be directly used for investment and consumption in China, after the actor obtains mainstream virtual currency through issuing new virtual currency, he also exchanges it for legal currency by himself before investing, consuming or other activities. Therefore, in the transaction activities with mainstream virtual currency as the direct collection object, the ultimate purpose of the actor issuing virtual currency is still to obtain legal currency, and mainstream virtual currency only plays a role as a medium in it. The nature of its illegal fundraising has not changed due to the participation of mainstream virtual currency. The opening of the 2017 announcement mentioned that the activities of raising funds through issuing tokens in China "are suspected of engaging in illegal financial activities and seriously disrupting the economic and financial order." If one denies the nature of fund-raising simply because the perpetrators directly collect mainstream virtual currencies, or believes that only illegal fund-raising activities that directly collect legal currency will violate the financial order, it is obvious that one has not seen the essence of the relevant transaction behavior, ignored the "quasi-currency" nature of mainstream virtual currencies, and is not in line with my country's relevant policy narratives.

In fact, the 2017 announcement also clarified the nature of the act of financing through the collection of mainstream virtual currencies: Token issuance financing refers to the financing subject raising so-called "virtual currencies" such as Bitcoin and Ethereum from investors through the illegal sale and circulation of tokens. It is essentially an act of illegal public financing without approval. It can be seen that the act of raising mainstream virtual currencies such as Bitcoin is characterized as a financing activity. The so-called "financing", as the name suggests, is the flow of funds. However, as mentioned above, mainstream virtual currencies cannot be classified as "funds", and the act of collecting mainstream virtual currencies belongs to "financing". Then the only reasonable explanation is that mainstream virtual currencies can be regarded as substitutes for legal currencies. To a certain extent, obtaining mainstream virtual currencies is equivalent to obtaining a certain amount of legal currency. This logic is consistent with the objective liquidity and exchange convenience of mainstream virtual currencies. In the view of policymakers, mainstream virtual currencies do not belong to currencies, but their participation in the sale of virtual currencies as a trading medium should not affect the determination of the nature of related financing activities.

In short, mainstream virtual currencies exist as transaction media in virtual currency financing activities, and the nature of related illegal fund-raising activities has not changed as a result. This does not conflict with the requirement for identifying "funds" as the object of fund-raising.

"Four characteristics" is a commonly accepted abbreviation in theory and practice for the four conditions that should be met in identifying illegal fund-raising crimes. It is the key to identifying illegal fund-raising criminal cases. Compared with traditional illegal fund-raising criminal cases, the identification of publicity and sociality in virtual currency trading illegal fund-raising cases is not obviously special, but there are certain obstacles in the identification of illegality, and there are potential differences in the identification of inducement.

According to the explanation of illegal fundraising, illegality includes two situations: "without the permission of the relevant departments in accordance with the law" and "borrowing the form of legal operation". The 2017 announcement clearly stated that token issuance financing is an act of illegal public financing without approval. From this qualitative point of view, the illegality of illegal fundraising through virtual currency trading should fall under the situation of "without the permission of the relevant departments in accordance with the law". But the question is, does issuing virtual currency financing require a license?

Article 81 of the Commercial Bank Law stipulates that if a person illegally absorbs public deposits or absorbs public deposits in disguised form without the approval of the banking regulatory authority of the State Council, and if the act constitutes a crime, he shall be investigated for criminal liability in accordance with the law. Accordingly, the absorption of public deposits shall be approved by the banking regulatory authority of the State Council. Therefore, it is generally believed that my country implements a concession system for the operation of deposit business. The so-called "concession" refers to "the permission for the administrative authority to transfer the development and use rights or operation rights of resources to an organization or individual for a fee based on its ownership or monopoly of resources." Concession is a type of license with relatively strict market access control in the Administrative Licensing Law, but obtaining a license means that specific activities can be carried out. In other words, obtaining a license is legal, and not obtaining it is illegal. However, the 2017 announcement has actually banned the sale of virtual currency financing. As some scholars have said, "unapproval can only apply to illegal financing activities that are clearly required by law to be approved but have not been approved", and "for activities that have clear prohibitive provisions in the law, there is no need to consider whether to approve them." Therefore, the above-mentioned relevant cases are logically incomplete in classifying illegal characteristics.

Then, does the illegal type of illegal fund-raising through virtual currency trading belong to the category of "borrowing the form of legal operation"? Obviously not. The so-called "borrowing the form of legal operation" is legal in form, that is, its external form of operation is in compliance with the law, and what is illegal is its essence. For example, if funds are illegally absorbed by investing in shares, the external form of investment in shares itself is an economic activity permitted by law. As mentioned above, the sale of virtual currency as a means of illegal fund-raising through virtual currency trading is illegal in itself, so there is no such thing as borrowing the form of legal operation. Both its form and essence are illegal. Therefore, the two types of illegal fund-raising "illegality" that are clearly explained in illegal fund-raising are difficult to be well matched with the illegal characteristics of illegal fund-raising through virtual currency trading. And this may be the root cause of the vagueness of the argument of illegality characteristics in most judgments in such cases.

In 2019, the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Ministry of Finance issued the Opinions on Several Issues Concerning the Handling of Criminal Cases of Illegal Fund-raising (hereinafter referred to as the 2019 Opinions) which clearly stated that the determination of the "illegality" of illegal fund-raising should be based on the national financial management laws and regulations; if the national financial management laws and regulations only provide for principled provisions, they can be based on the spirit of the legal provisions and refer to the provisions of departmental regulations or other national normative documents. Perhaps we cannot conclude that violation of the above provisions can be used to determine illegality, especially when the interpretation of illegal fund-raising specifically describes the characteristics of illegality and is still valid. However, it is not uncommon for the 2021 Regulations to describe the illegality of illegal fund-raising as "without the permission of the financial management department of the State Council in accordance with the law or in violation of the national financial management regulations", thereby making violation of regulations an independent standard for determining illegality. Although criminal judicial judgments are independent, illegal fund-raising, as a typical statutory crime, "has the dual attributes of administrative illegality and criminal illegality". In response to the major adjustments to the prior administrative law, the logic of determining illegality as a normative constituent element of the crime of illegal fund-raising must be re-examined.

From the historical context of the evolution of the standard for identifying illegality, the influence of administrative law on criminal law is extremely profound. "Without approval" was a clear statement of illegality in the Commercial Bank Law as early as 1995, and the State Council's "Measures for the Prohibition of Illegal Financial Institutions and Illegal Financial Business Activities" (hereinafter referred to as the "1998 Prohibition Measures") in 1998 followed it. As a result, before the introduction of the interpretation of illegal fundraising, both the academic and practical circles used this as the only standard for the identification of illegality of illegal fundraising crimes, believing that "without approval, it is illegal"; the interpretation of illegal fundraising added the standard of "borrowing the form of legal operation", which followed the relevant statement in the "Notice on the Prohibition of Illegal Financial Institutions and Illegal Financial Business Activities" issued by the central bank in 1999. After the 2021 regulations were issued, the 1998 Prohibition Measures were abolished, and "illegality" was redefined. Some scholars say that this is "a huge progress", and the author agrees. "Borrowing the form of legal business" is only a summary of the characteristics of the traditional disguised public deposit-taking activities. It does not point out the substantive basis of illegality. With the emergence of various new types of illegal fund-raising activities, this standard is obviously difficult to adapt to the changes in the new situation. This is true for administrative regulation of illegal fund-raising, and even more so for criminal regulation. Moreover, compared with fund-raising activities that are legal in form but illegal in substance, fund-raising activities that are illegal in form and substance are obviously more harmful to society. By citing the minor to illustrate the serious, the latter should be included in the scope of "illegality" identification. In fact, as a statutory crime, the "illegality" in the illegal fund-raising crime should mainly mean the violation of the prior administrative law. There may be differences in the specific normative requirements for identification with administrative violations, but the basic direction of identification should be consistent. Combined with the relevant provisions of the 2019 Opinions, we believe that "violation of regulations is illegality" should be an independent standard for the identification of the "illegality" of illegal fund-raising crimes. It is only based on the consideration of the modesty of criminal law and the distinction between criminal and administrative law that the violated regulations should reach the normative level clearly defined in the 2019 Opinions.

In summary, the 2021 Regulations, as a national financial management regulation formulated by the State Council, have made principled provisions on illegal fundraising in the name of virtual currency. At the same time, referring to the prohibitions on token issuance and financing in the 2017 announcement and other national normative documents on financial management, based on the standard of "violation of regulations is illegal", virtual currency trading-based fundraising should be considered "illegal".

The interpretation of illegal fund-raising defines inducement as "promising to repay principal and interest or pay returns in the form of currency, physical objects, equity, etc. within a certain period of time". In cases of illegal fund-raising involving virtual currency transactions, the perpetrators often provide relatively fixed returns or promise to repurchase the minimum amount according to their own rules. Although the returns are mostly paid in the form of virtual currency, virtual currency, as a special commodity, still has exchange value. It is still appropriate to regard it as a way of repaying principal and interest similar to the above-mentioned "physical objects, equity". In some cases, there are also dynamic returns, that is, investors obtain commissions by developing downlines. In this case, the basis for the payer to pay returns is the behavior of the investor developing downlines, rather than the repayment of principal and interest when operating "deposits". Therefore, if only dynamic returns are promised, it is generally not a crime of illegal fund-raising; if the level and number of people developed meet the statutory conditions, it may constitute the crime of organizing and leading pyramid selling activities; if the promised returns include both the above-mentioned static returns and dynamic returns, generally according to the principle of imaginary concurrence, one of the more serious ones will be handled as a crime of illegal fund-raising. The main disagreement is whether it is considered to meet the characteristics of "inducement" if the currency value is merely claimed to have room for appreciation? The above cases 1 and 2 are qualitatively different from the crime of fund-raising fraud and the crime of fraud precisely because of the different understandings of "inducement".

Virtual currency is not a deposit, so illegal fundraising through virtual currency trading is a disguised form of absorbing public deposits, but the obligations promised should be the same as those of absorbing public deposits, that is, they should meet the requirements of "paying principal and interest or paying returns". If the actor claims or even promises that the value of virtual currency has room for appreciation, but does not set a payment obligation for himself to fulfill the above promise, it should not be considered that the "inducement" requirement is met. In this case, even if the currency value rises, the investor sells it in the secondary market and obtains profits, and the so-called "return" obtained is not based on the actor's "payment", but on the "takeover" of a third party, which is a market behavior. However, if the actor promises to repurchase the bottom line while declaring the room for currency value appreciation, because the actor sets a payment obligation for himself, so that his act of issuing virtual currency has the same nature as absorbing public deposits, then his promise of profits should be considered to meet the conditions for "inducement". Therefore, the so-called inducement is not just to lure investors with benefits, but also requires the actor to set a bottom-line payment obligation for himself in order to enable investors to realize the above benefits, so as to formally ensure the realization of his promise. This is the core meaning of the identification of inducement characteristics. According to the description of the relevant case in Case 1, the actor did not set a payment obligation for himself, so the identification conditions of "inducement" are lacking. It may be more accurate to characterize it as a fraud crime, and the judgment conclusion of Case 2 is undoubtedly appropriate.

In cases of illegal fund-raising involving virtual currency transactions, investors’ speculative mentality often outweighs the pursuit of stable returns, but we believe that this does not affect the establishment of inducement: First, the promise of positive returns is not available in pure currency speculation. In the currency speculation circle, the transaction prices of virtual currencies, including various types of “copycat coins”, are very unstable, with abnormally large fluctuations, so that the abnormally high returns claimed by the perpetrators in the process of selling virtual currencies are not abnormal in the eyes of currency speculators. However, the perpetrators’ claims of only rising and not falling or the promise of repurchase guarantees make currency speculation a “guaranteed profit without loss” investment behavior. That is, under the blessing of “inducement”, investors can reduce the risk of negative returns to zero at least in form while obtaining positive returns, which is obviously different from pure currency speculation. Second, there should usually be a causal relationship between the perpetrator’s inducement behavior and the investor’s investment behavior, but “multiple causes and one effect” is not excluded. In fact, in any illegal fund-raising case, investors decide to invest based on multiple factors. The influence of the actor's inducement on their investment decision cannot be ignored just because they have a speculative mentality. Even for cryptocurrency speculators, the actor's bottom-line promise of positive returns is still incomparable to general cryptocurrency speculation. The actor's inducement is always an important factor in attracting a large number of investors, including cryptocurrency speculators, to invest in such cases. Based on the above two points, we believe that as long as the actor makes a bottom-line return promise and influences the investor's investment decision, inducement should be deemed to be established, regardless of the investor's investment mentality.

The diagram for legal reasoning by reverse reasoning is as follows:

In practice, reverse reasoning is often used by judges to disprove the illegal purpose of possession in illegal fund-raising cases, and Case 4 is an example. "Willfully squandering the funds raised, making it impossible to return the funds raised" and "taking the funds raised and absconding" are two situations that are clearly defined in the interpretation of illegal fund-raising to identify the purpose of illegal possession. Case 4 achieves the purpose of proving that the perpetrator has the purpose of illegal possession by proving that the above two situations do not exist in the case. The above argument seems reasonable, but in fact there are obvious flaws: according to the provisions of the interpretation of illegal fund-raising, there are eight situations for identifying the purpose of illegal possession, and the purpose of illegal possession can be identified if one of the situations is met. Therefore, from a logical point of view, in order to achieve the purpose of disprove, at least the situations clearly defined in the relevant normative documents must be excluded before it can be established. Because it is obvious that denying one or two of them does not mean that the other conditions are not met. Just as Case 3 does not have the above two situations, but the judge still identifies the purpose of illegal possession on the grounds that "the operation of funds is unsustainable". In Case 4, the perpetrator promised that the currency value would increase by 5 to 10 times after listing, but investors were unable to sell or withdraw cash after purchasing. One cannot help but ask, how can the perpetrator guarantee such an abnormally high return? This is obviously not achievable through normal production and operation activities. Can such a fundraising model or capital operation method be sustainable?

Since "what enters the judge's field of vision in litigation is not objective facts, but legal facts", the foundation of "legal facts" is evidence, and when there is insufficient evidence and doubt about the facts, the benefit of the doubt should belong to the defendant. A common practice in the handling of illegal fund-raising cases is that when the perpetrator confesses that the funds are used for production and business activities, but due to the wide range of involvement, it is difficult to verify at the moment, limited judicial resources, and the pressure of the statutory case handling period, the judicial authorities are unable or have not proved or disproved this, and generally make a determination in favor of the defendant, thereby convicting the defendant of the crime of illegally absorbing public deposits. Although there are some unreasonable aspects, from the perspective of legal logic and the actual situation of judicial case handling, it is still a pragmatic move that takes into account both legal principles and case handling practices. However, as shown in Case 4, the profits promised to be paid in virtual currency trading cases are often several times, dozens of times, or even hundreds of times. Even if the relevant funds are used for production and operation activities in accordance with the above-mentioned principle of making judgments in favor of the defendant when in doubt, normal production and operation activities are usually unable to obtain such abnormally high profits to maintain the operation of funds. In other words, if the profit promise of the actor is ignored and the determination of the purpose of illegal possession is still excluded in accordance with judicial practice, it is obviously contrary to common sense and reason.

Promising to pay abnormally high returns is the norm for illegal fund-raising involving virtual currency transactions, which also causes the empirical thinking and inertial logic formed in the traditional case handling process to no longer work. For the judge, the case facts on which the judgment is based are actually facts that have been selected and processed, and the legal importance of individual facts has been considered at the stage of determining the facts of the case. The same is true for the case facts based on which the purpose of illegal possession is determined. In the case where there is obviously no illegal possession purpose, such as the actor returning all the principal and interest as scheduled, then we naturally do not need to check the provisions of the judicial interpretation one by one to examine whether the conditions for determining the purpose of illegal possession are met. Similarly, if there are obvious facts in the case that indicate that the actor has the purpose of illegal possession or at least can give rise to major suspicion, then we cannot hastily determine that the actor does not have the purpose of illegal possession based solely on the failure to meet some conditions while ignoring the consideration of the above-mentioned explicit facts. The fact that the actor promised to pay abnormally high returns belongs to the above-mentioned explicit facts. In fact, reverse reasoning is still an effective legal argumentation method in the process of disproving the purpose of illegal possession, especially refuting the facts relied on by the public prosecutor to accuse the purpose of illegal possession, which is still an important way to achieve the purpose of disproving. However, what needs to be paid attention to at this time is whether there are other explicit facts closely related to the purpose of illegal possession in the case? The disproving of the purpose of illegal possession in Case 4 ignored the fact that "the currency value was promised to increase by 5-10 times after listing", which led to fallacy.

From the perspective of the method of identifying criminal facts, the method of identifying the purpose of illegal possession in the relevant judicial interpretation is still a presumption, which "uses daily empirical rules as a tool and allows rebuttal evidence to overturn as a consequence." The purpose of illegal possession reflects the subjective activities of the actor, but the subjective is also reflected in the objective. In practice, if the situation of "unsustainable operation of funds" occurs, according to the empirical rules, it can be presumed that the actor has the purpose of illegal possession. Based on the laws or common sense of market economic activities, the promise to pay abnormally high returns of several times, dozens of times, or hundreds of times is closely related to "unsustainable operation of funds", and can even be said to be basically equivalent. We believe that in the absence of rebuttal evidence, it can be presumed that the actor has the purpose of illegal possession. Therefore, even if the evidence in the case shows that the actor used the raised funds for production and operation activities (including situations where there is doubt), if the actor cannot provide rebuttal evidence, that is, cannot prove that the profitability of its production and operation activities has the realistic possibility of paying all principal and interest, the judge should still make a determination that is unfavorable to the defendant. This is the judicial logic of determining the purpose of illegal possession in Case 3. Of course, this does not mean that unless there is real evidence to the contrary, all persons involved in illegal fundraising cases that promise abnormally high returns will be identified as having the purpose of illegal possession. There is still room for distinction in individual case identification, based on the different status of each actor in the joint crime, their degree of subjective knowledge, etc.

Technological progress and the need for legal regulation always go hand in hand. "The development of new technologies must comply with effective laws. In this process, we try to grasp and understand important new legal issues, analyze them and answer these issues based on existing effective laws." Virtual currency trading illegal fundraising, as a new type of crime under the background of blockchain technology development, shows characteristics that are very different from traditional cases in terms of technical background and financing model. To a certain extent, it subverts the judicial logic and empirical cognition of traditional case handling and triggers a series of new legal application issues. Faced with the changes in prior administrative laws and the advancement of the country's virtual currency transaction control policy, we must use the tools of doctrine to grasp the existing norms and the true meaning behind the norms in the dynamic connection between different norms and even policies. In addition, we should make timely adjustments to the inherent ideas of similar case handling, so as to adapt to the emerging new situations and solve the emerging new problems.

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