Crypto-Asset Disputes in Vietnamese Courts: How Courts Handle Them During the Pilot Phase

When a crypto-asset dispute reaches a Vietnamese court, the judge first question is not “what is the token price” but “what asset is this, under what contract, and where is the evidence”. Since the Law on Digital Technology Industry 71/2025 recognised digital assets as property, the courtroom door has opened — but the outcome is still decided by the original trading framework: inside or outside the pilot, and whether electronic data evidence was preserved properly.

Governing Instruments

The adjudication basis: digital assets are property, disputes follow civil law and civil procedure

From 1 January 2026, the Law on Digital Technology Industry 71/2025/QH15 recognises digital assets as a category of property under the Civil Code 91/2015/QH13. The direct procedural consequence: disputes over crypto assets — sale and purchase, entrusted management, lending, disputes with intermediaries — are accepted as ordinary civil or business and commercial disputes at the competent court; claims are built on familiar institutions: contract validity, the duty to deliver assets or pay, damages and treatment of void transactions. Before this recognition mark, adjudication practice had hesitated over characterising crypto assets; the 1 January 2026 mark together with the Resolution 05/2025 pilot framework has removed most of the characterisation bottleneck for transactions arising afterwards.

Jurisdiction and applicable law still follow general procedural principles: a case with a defendant residing, assets located, or a contract performed in Vietnam falls under Vietnamese court jurisdiction; trading with a foreign platform whose terms choose foreign law and foreign arbitration can push the dispute out of Vietnamese courts under that agreement — a point Vietnamese users usually discover only when a dispute has already arisen, because the clause sits in the terms of use they accepted when opening the account.

Evidence is electronic data: its legal value and preservation decide win or loss

A crypto-asset case is won or lost on evidence, and the evidence here is almost entirely electronic data: trading history on the platform, blockchain records (transaction hashes, wallet addresses, timestamps), emails and messages with the intermediary, bank statements of the purchase money flow. The Civil Procedure Code recognises data messages as a source of evidence, and a data message carries evidentiary value where its integrity and accessibility are assured — in adjudication practice, data produced from the platform own system or extracted and backed up with authentication weighs far more than self-saved screenshots, which the opposing party can readily attack for authenticity.

The fatal weakness of many plaintiffs is that the evidence lies entirely in the opponent hands: the platform locks the account, deletes history, or ceases operating. Preservation measures must precede the lawsuit: extracting and notarising or bailiff-recording the transaction data as soon as dispute signs appear, asking the court for interim emergency measures (asset freezing, transfer prohibition) where dissipation is threatened, and collecting public on-chain data (blockchain explorers) — data nobody can delete, and usually the evidentiary backbone of the case.

Application Analysis

The hardest question of this topic is how far a user trading on an unlicensed foreign platform is protected. The honest answer has three layers: (1) on sanctions, an unlicensed platform operating toward the Vietnamese market is penalised under Decree 284/2026/ND-CP and regulators have repeatedly issued public warnings about unlicensed platforms; (2) on civil law, a trading contract with an unlicensed platform risks being treated as void for violating the prohibitions of the pilot framework — the consequence of invalidity is mutual restitution, an outcome usually adverse to a user who lost money to volatility or platform appropriation; (3) on enforcement, even with a judgment, recovering assets from a platform with no presence in Vietnam is extremely difficult. The practical conclusion: trading outside the pilot framework is trading with almost no legal insurance.

Conversely, trading through a service organisation licensed within the pilot framework gives the user the full toolkit: a standard contract with a Vietnamese legal entity, client assets segregated under the pilot mechanism (assets remain traceable when the organisation has trouble), a complaint channel to the regulator, and clearly competent Vietnamese courts. Enterprises acting as intermediaries — brokers and client introducers to platforms — must also understand the joint exposure they carry when a platform fails: introducing investors to an unlicensed platform can itself be reviewed under the Decree 284/2026 penalty framework and in civil liability toward their own clients.

Recommended Actions

Trade only through crypto-asset service organisations licensed within the Resolution 05/2025 pilot framework; keep the licensed organisation list published by the Ministry of Finance.
Preserve evidence as soon as dispute signs appear: extract trading history, bailiff-record electronic data, keep on-chain transaction hashes and bank statements.
Read the dispute-resolution clause before opening an account on any platform: applicable law, arbitration, court jurisdiction — and price it as a transaction risk cost.
Where asset dissipation is threatened, request interim emergency measures from the court in parallel with preparing the lawsuit.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do Vietnamese courts handle crypto-asset disputes during the pilot period?

As an ordinary civil or business and commercial dispute: since the Law on Digital Technology Industry 71/2025/QH15 recognised digital assets as property under the Civil Code 91/2015/QH13 from 1 January 2026, courts accept cases on crypto-asset sale, entrustment and lending contracts and disputes with intermediaries, applying the institutions of contract validity, performance of obligations, damages and void transactions. Transactions within the Resolution 05/2025 pilot framework have a clearer characterisation basis: a contract with a licensed organisation, segregated client assets and transaction records kept by a supervised organisation — all making the case far easier to handle than off-framework trading.

Are crypto assets treated as property in civil disputes and enforcement seizure?

Yes. The Law on Digital Technology Industry 71/2025/QH15 classifies digital assets as property under the Civil Code from 1 January 2026, so a crypto asset is an object of ownership and civil transactions like other assets, and is an asset to be declared and seized in civil judgment enforcement when held by the judgment debtor. Actual seizure runs through the service organisation custodying the asset (freezing the wallet and account at the enforcement authority request or under a court interim measure); for self-custodied assets in a personal wallet, seizure faces real technical difficulty, and parties often must use freezing of substitute assets instead.

How do courts assess blockchain transaction evidence?

On-chain records (transaction hashes, wallet addresses, amounts, timestamps) are electronic data — an evidence source the Civil Procedure Code recognises where integrity and accessibility for use are assured. In court assessment, on-chain data has two advantages: it cannot be altered or deleted by any party, and it is independently verifiable through public chain explorers; the point needing support is proving the wallet address belongs to the litigant (through the platform account-opening file, corresponding transfers from a bank account, or the opponent admission). The most effective presentation in practice is a bailiff record or authenticated extract of the whole evidence chain: bank money flow — platform transactions — on-chain records.

Where does an investor sue in a dispute with an unlicensed foreign platform?

Read the platform terms of use first: most foreign platforms fix foreign law and foreign arbitration, and that agreement can make a Vietnamese court decline the case under the parties agreement. If there is no binding arbitration clause, the investor may sue at the Vietnamese court of their residence or of the place of contract performance for a foreign-element dispute under the Civil Procedure Code jurisdiction rules — but enforcing a winning judgment against a platform with no presence and no assets in Vietnam is the largest practical obstacle. This is why trading through an organisation licensed within the pilot framework — a Vietnamese legal entity with clear jurisdiction — is the only substantive protection channel.