Virtual currency loan contracts ruled invalid; failure to repay borrowed coins results in compensation based on acquisition cost

Odaily reported that the Guangdong Provincial High People's Court released its top ten commercial and financial cases of 2025, among which a virtual currency lending dispute showed that a repayment clause stipulating "whichever is higher" in an IOU essentially guaranteed the lender a share of profits from coin price fluctuations, and was thus ruled invalid. As the virtual currency could not be returned, the Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court ruled that the borrower compensate the lender for losses based on the cost at which the lender acquired the virtual currency, specifically 199,600 yuan per virtual currency token.