The Wuchang District Court concluded a Filecoin "mining" contract dispute case and ruled that the contract involved was invalid

Odaily Planet Daily News The People's Court of Wuchang District, Wuhan City successfully concluded a case involving a virtual currency "mining" contract dispute. Among them, the plaintiff Zhou and the defendant a technology company signed the "Storage Server Purchase Contract" on July 7, 2021. The two parties agreed that: Zhou will purchase an IPFS storage server at a price of 179,800 yuan, and the IPFS storage server will be put on the shelf in the computer room and will be distributed by A technology company hosts, a technology company guarantees to Zhou that the IPFS storage server provided can provide services on the IPFS network and obtain Filecoin rewards, can iteratively upgrade hardware according to network needs, and promises that the currency production will not be lower than the market average level ( return on investment), otherwise it will be made up by a technology company. After the contract was signed, a technology company managed the storage server purchased by Zhou according to the agreement. Zhou was able to learn about the daily production of currency and pledge release of the storage server through the application software developed by the technology company. Later, Zhou realized that The virtual currency generated by the storage server is explicitly prohibited by the state, so the lawsuit was brought to the court, requesting to confirm the invalidity of the contract, return all contract funds and pay interest on capital occupation. After the trial, the court held that although the two parties signed the "Storage Server Purchase Contract" involved in the name of the storage server sales contract, the real purpose was to purchase computing power storage servers to obtain the virtual currency Filecoin tokens. It can be seen from the agreement in the computer room of a technology company that the transaction involved in the contract involved is actually a "mining" activity for the production of virtual currency through special computer equipment. Such "mining" activities consume a lot of energy and carbon emissions, which is not conducive to the optimization of my country's industrial structure, energy conservation and emission reduction, and is not conducive to my country's goal of reaching carbon peaks and carbon neutrality. Multiple risks such as asset risk, business failure risk, and investment speculation risk are prominent, which are detrimental to social and public interests. The transactions under the contract involved in the case violated the principle of green development, harmed the public interest, and did not comply with the relevant administrative regulations and regulatory requirements on industrial restructuring, and the contract involved in the case should be invalid. A technology company, as the seller, should be aware that the sale of the storage device involved and the entrusted custody are "mining" activities for the production of virtual currency, and it should bear relatively high policy regulations and legal risks involved in such activities. duty of care; Zhou, as the purchaser, should also be aware of the possible legal risks of investing in virtual currency, but he still signed a contract with a technology company and paid for it in pursuit of income. Both parties were at fault for the invalidity of the contract involved, and should bear civil liabilities commensurate with their faults. Comprehensively considering the degree of fault of both parties and the actual maintenance and use of storage devices by a technology company, the court determined that a technology company should return the contract payment of 120,000 yuan to Zhou at its discretion; There was no agreement on the interest, so the court did not support Zhou's claim for capital occupation of interest. After the judgment becomes effective, the parties voluntarily perform the legal obligations determined by the effective judgment.