Digital assets, personal property and categorisation: the Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025

Personal property has had an enduring bipartite categorisation of things in action and things in possession. But digital assets, supposedly situated outside both categories, have disrupted this categorisation. Recent statutory reform, through the Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025, seeks to permit a third category of personal property. This contribution outlines the effect of the Act and of a third category of personal property. The third category is negatively defined, dependent on the boundaries of the other categories for its scope. The breadth of the thing in action category is not settled, which means that the scope of the third category is undefined. The Act suggests that digital assets can be a ‘thing’ that is ‘the object of personal property rights’. But the Act does not define what this thing is, nor does it tell us what rights an owner of a third category thing might have. Cases that have considered these questions have highlighted the transactional abilities these assets enable. If this is the focus, then these assets are best viewed as things in action.