Reconstructing Fiduciary Security for Digital Assets in Indonesia: Priority, Publicity, and Enforcement Gaps

The legal problem addressed in this article is no longer whether digital assets possess economic value, but whether Indonesian fiduciary law can create an effective, opposable, and enforceable security interest over assets whose ownership and control are mediated by cryptographic or custodial systems. This study uses doctrinal legal research with statutory, conceptual, case, and comparative approaches. It analyses Law No. 42 of 1999 on Fiduciary Guarantees, the financial-sector framework for digital financial assets and crypto assets, Constitutional Court Decisions No. 18/PUU-XVII/2019 and No. 2/PUU-XIX/2021, and comparative developments in Singapore and the 2022 amendments to the United States Uniform Commercial Code. The study finds that the broad statutory concept of a fiduciary object can conceptually include transferable digital assets, but regulatory recognition of crypto assets does not by itself solve the private-law requirements of specialty, publicity, priority, and enforcement. The principal gap is therefore operational rather than merely definitional: the fiduciary register is not integrated with technical control or regulated custody, while self-custodied assets can be transferred without the creditor’s factual control. The article proposes a two-stage reconstruction that separates asset eligibility from security operability. It recommends technology-neutral eligibility criteria, digital-specific identification standards, registration linked to verifiable control or custodian notice, clearer priority and proceeds rules, and due-process-compliant enforcement. This reconstruction preserves the closed structure of property security while adapting its mechanisms to digital collateral.