The financial assets that are subject to major EU financial legislation (i.e. (designated types of) financial instruments) have traditionally been defined in a largely exemplary and circular manner. The recent proliferation of ‘non-traditional’ financial assets, such as cryptocurrencies and stablecoins, is increasingly challenging the viability of these pragmatic financial asset definitions. Through the analysis of the technologies and functionalities underpinning non-traditional financial assets, legal scholarship has aimed to categorize novel assets within the existing framework of financial asset definitions. Although a solid understanding of e.g. distributed ledger applications and cryptography appears a prerequisite for future policy and legislative interventions, contemporary EU financial legislation is mostly indifferent to the technologies on which financial assets may be wired. Categorizations based on the purposes that non-traditional assets may serve (i.e. payment, utility, and investment) are more relevant to financial law, but suffer from subjectivity because they depend on the asset usage by the asset holder. Against this backdrop, this paper proposes a novel systematization of non-traditional assets that is based upon the conceptual substructure of the assets within the scope of EU financial legislation. More specifically, this paper submits that, irrespective of underlying technologies and functionalities, all assets that are subject to major EU financial legislation have a conceptual common denominator: they entail the liability of an entity and, hence, have intrinsic value. The proposed categorization singles out a well-defined group of novel financial assets that is not subject to EU financial law (i.e. assets that only have extrinsic value). Different from functionality- and technology-based categorizations, the suggested approach allows to eradicate some ambiguities that are present in the existing taxonomies. By exploring the conceptual common denominator of the financial assets that are subject to EU financial legislation, this paper aims to foster debate on the circular and exemplary character of financial asset definitions in EU financial legislation in general and the relation of these definitions to novel types of financial assets in particular.

传统上，受主要欧盟金融法规（即（指定类型的）金融工具）约束的金融资产通常以示例性和循环方式进行定义。最近，诸如加密货币和稳定币之类的“非传统”金融资产激增，正日益挑战这些务实的金融资产定义的可行性。通过对支撑非传统金融资产的技术和功能的分析，法律奖学金旨在将新资产归类于现有金融资产定义框架之内。尽管对例如分布式分类帐应用程序和密码术似乎是未来政策和立法干预的先决条件，当代欧盟金融立法对可用于连接金融资产的技术大多无动于衷。根据非传统资产可能服务的目的进行分类（即付款，公用事业和投资）与金融法更为相关，但由于它们取决于资产持有人的资产使用情况，因此存在主观性。在此背景下，本文提出了一种新颖的非传统资产系统化方法，该方法基于欧盟金融法规范围内资产的概念子结构。更具体地说，本文认为，不论基础技术和功能如何，所有受主要欧盟金融立法管制的资产都具有概念上的共同点：它们承担着实体的责任，因此具有内在价值。拟议的分类可以明确定义一组不受欧盟金融法约束的新型金融资产（即仅具有外部价值的资产）。与基于功能和技术的分类不同，建议的方法可以消除现有分类法中存在的一些歧义。通过探索受欧盟金融法规约束的金融资产的概念共同点，本文旨在促进就欧盟金融法规中金融资产定义的圆形和示例性特征以及这些定义与新型金融资产的关系进行辩论。特别是金融资产​​。