The UK government lays out plans to regulate crypto, including measures to strengthen rules for lending, disclosures, financial intermediaries, and custodians
- The U.K. laid out plan to regulate the cryptocurrency industry. — The proposals include strengthening rules on crypto lending …
CNBCRyan Browne
Context & Ripple Effects
The proposal extends the UK's earlier push to bring crypto marketing under financial-promotion scrutiny, including plans to align crypto advertising with other financial promotions. It broadens that focus from buyer-facing ads to lending, disclosures, intermediaries and custody.
Later coverage shows the framework moving toward implementation: the government published final crypto rules with a phased rollout, while the FCA separately targeted promotional incentives and retail borrowing.
First-order effects
Crypto lenders, custodians and intermediaries operating in the UK face a prospective rulebook covering their disclosures and conduct rather than a regime focused chiefly on advertising.
The UK government gives the FCA's expanding crypto remit a policy basis that reaches across the firms handling customer assets and transactions.
Second-order effects
Crypto businesses must align product design and customer communications with both proposed conduct rules and the FCA's restricted-investment approach to crypto promotions, increasing compliance demands across the customer journey.
Retail crypto providers face pressure to limit riskier acquisition and financing practices as the FCA's later proposal to bar borrowing for crypto purchases builds on the same consumer-protection direction.
Third-order effects
The UK is moving crypto from a lightly bounded promotional-risk category toward a financial-services framework that regulates the activity chain from marketing through custody.
If phased implementation holds, firms able to meet UK disclosure, lending and custody requirements will be better positioned than providers built around less-regulated access to retail customers.
The trend: UK crypto policy is converging on a full conduct regime in which marketing, leverage, intermediation and asset custody are regulated as connected retail-risk controls.
#Binance has vocally supported the need for effective and appropriate regulation to help with mainstream adoption of digital assets. We welcome the next steps from the UK Government in making this happen with the @hmtreasury's publication of plans to regulate crypto activities.
new: the UK Treasury will publish a consultation on regulating crypto tomorrow. plans include: - exchanges as MTFs - standards on commingling, bookkeeping, governance - market abuse regime covering pump & dumps, insider trading, conflict of interest, STORs on Terminal now 🖥️ http…
Not much on mining or validation unfortunately - but there are questions about it. An explicit confirmation that PoW won't be regulated r/n. I personally think there's scope for facilitating PoS validation. This a good article on that by Gunnercooke: https://gunnercooke.com/... h…
@lexnode and @stephendpalley have been taking about specific disclosure regimes for raising finance for years... This focuses on trading venues to provide disclosures for non-issuer crypto like BTC and a specific disclosure regime for crypto that isn't a financial security https:…
More regulation= more growth and opportunities. Safer environment for both users and for the industry. 🇬🇧 Future financial services regulatory regime for cryptoassets https://www.gov.uk/...
this will be interesting read once it's out but regulating activities and disclosure etc rather than assets themselves seems pretty sensible https://twitter.com/...
“By capitalising on the potential benefits offered by crypto, we can strengthen our position as a world leader in fintech, unlock growth and boost innovation.” https://twitter.com/...
There's a good argument that it's a mistake to regulate crypto because you can end up having to bail out investors who you have convinced that it's now safe. And do we really want the UK to be a “ global crypto hub”? https://twitter.com/...
The UK government (finally) unveiled its plans to regulate the crypto industry. The proposals take aim at risky lending practices that exacerbated the industry's woes in the past year - incl. the demise of FTX. Here's a rundown of what's been announced and why it matters 🧵
Government announces consultation for regulating crypto. Last week the @TheFCA said 85% of crypto firms fail to meet minimum requirements when they apply to register with it. https://www.bbc.com/...
UK pushes ahead with plans to bring crypto under mainstream regulation via @FT This is an important development: well thought out & balanced regulation of crypto is necessary for economic growth & consumer protection- I'll be following closely. https://www.ft.com/...
More generally, the govt says it wants consumers protected. Many mention FTX in talk of consumer crypto losses. But it's not the only firm to have failed. Celsius, BlockFi, Voyager, Genesis... all notable examples of crypto lenders that went bust, erasing billions 💸 https://twitt…
Laughable. “Custodian” in crypto usually means “borrower”. Crypto companies' idea of bookkeeping is Quickbooks. Corporate governance is “me and my mates”. And crypto lenders *do* produce clear contractual terms of service - that screw over the users. https://www.bloomberg.com/...…
Government promises robust crypto regulation. Firm proposals to be detailed later today ahead of consultation according to press release. https://www.bbc.com/... Analysis from me: https://twitter.com/...
First up, 🇬🇧 is going to crack down on centralised crypto lending. Treasury has committed to a “world-leading” framework that brings standards for crypto lenders closer to that of traditional finance. https://twitter.com/...