Review

The article is aimed at studying the legal nature of virtual assets as evidence in the criminal process, analyzing the current state of scientific development of this problem, as well as formulating proposals for improving the criminal procedural legislation in the field of legal regulation of virtual as-sets. The analysis showed that virtual assets are a tool that is actively used in criminal activities both inside the country and outside, to harm the national security of the state. Therefore, virtual assets make up a significant part of the evidence in criminal proceedings. However, in the criminal process there is no single approach to assessing virtual assets as evidence by the criteria of belonging and admissibility, and the position of the Supreme Court of Ukraine on this issue has not yet been deter-mined. Consequently, this problem requires an urgent regulatory settlement. To achieve this goal, general scientific and special methods of scientific knowledge were used, chosen taking into account the goals and objectives of the study: the dialectical method of knowledge; methods of abstraction, analysis, synthesis, induction and description; method of theoretical and legal modeling, historical and legal, structural-functional and formal-logical methods of knowledge. The article examines the legal nature of virtual assets, judicial practice, as well as compliance of domestic legislation with inter-national standards and requirements in the field of regulation of virtual assets. The author notes that when evaluating virtual assets, it is necessary to take into account that digital information is a unique intangible object that can only be investigated indirectly. The author emphasizes that the recognition by the courts of various instances of virtual assets as material evidence is debatable, therefore, it is advisable, in the absence of such evidence in the current CPC as «digital evidence», to classify virtual assets as documents. Conclusions . It is noted that by their legal nature, virtual assets are not material objects that can retain traces of a crime, and this makes it impossible for them to relate to material evidence. The author proposes, given the normative uncertainty of the place of virtual assets in the criminal procedure law among the sources of evidence, to amend the CPC and supplement part 2 of Art. 84 with the concept of «digital evidence».