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United Kingdom

UK Confirms Plans To Bring Crypto Under Stricter Regulation (bloomberg.com) 24

The UK government confirmed plans to regulate cryptoasset activities more strictly, bringing them under the same regime as traditional financial services. From a report: The government intends to proceed with legislation in 2024 to implement the changes, according to a Treasury announcement on Monday, responding to a consultation it launched earlier this year. The plans include a mandate for crypto exchanges to write detailed requirements on admission standards and disclosures for token issuers when listing new assets. This could include information about a token's underlying code, known vulnerabilities and risks.

The UK's push to regulate crypto is part of a wider effort by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to attract more digital-asset businesses and investment to the country, while at the same time protecting consumers. Crypto firms have long complained that a lack of clear rules has made it hard for them to operate in the UK. "We must make the UK a place where cryptoasset firms have the clarity needed to invest and innovate, and where customers have the protections necessary for confidently using these technologies," said City Minister Andrew Griffith. "The UK is the obvious choice for starting and scaling a cryptoasset business."

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UK Confirms Plans To Bring Crypto Under Stricter Regulation

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  • Why not? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Malenfrant ( 781088 ) on Monday October 30, 2023 @10:23AM (#63965810)

    The UK might as well do this. It's already the go-to place for money laundering, why not add crypto-fraud to it's repertoire as well?

  • How many times do we have to teach you the same lesson, old man?!
  • The UK reverses its opinions pretty fast, with zero coherency or stability of thought. If I was launching a crypto firm, I'd stick to the Middle East (UAE, Bahrain, etc.), but always be ready to leave.
  • Parts of Speech (Score:5, Insightful)

    by necro81 ( 917438 ) on Monday October 30, 2023 @10:39AM (#63965862) Journal
    time to rant about a pet-peeve.

    "Crypto" is not a noun. It's a prefix. Want to talk about cryptocurrencies? Use that word, in it's entirety. Want to talk about cryptography? Use that word (sorry, Mission Impossible [youtu.be]). If I flip through a science journal, I'd expect articles referencing "cryptobiotic soil", not "crypto". Want to talk about my buddy who's into dungeons and vampires? OK, we call him Crypto, but that's an inside joke.

    The point is: cryptocurrencies and everything to do with it didn't suddenly get a monopoly on the word "crypto", which as I said isn't even a word on its own. "Cyber" is not a noun [youtu.be], either.
    • Thank you. Somebody needed to say it.

      I wasn't sure what the summary was even talking about, was thinking they were trying to promote their attempt to destroy encryption as being somehow good for business.

    • by anegg ( 1390659 )

      Hear, hear! I worked in government consulting for a number of years, and it became quite frustrating hearing senior managers at my firm talking about "cyber" without using a noun. This Slashdot article about "crypto" struck me the same way. When I first saw the headline and the UK involvement, my thoughts went to cryptography rather than cryptocurrency.

      There is no better way to indicate that you are clueless in a technical arena than to make big noise about an adjective without a noun to identify the pe

    • The Cambridge Dictionary disagrees
      https://dictionary.cambridge.o... [cambridge.org]
      Oxford Dictionary is behind a paywall, but says much the same thing.

      If you speak American English the Websters Dictionary also has it as a noun, but it has a different meaning
      https://www.merriam-webster.co... [merriam-webster.com]

      • That may be, but the problem of ambiguity remains. And context doesn't help here, especially given that the UK also has some (ill-conceived) regulations on encryption entering into force.
    • (The "Hacker") "I'd get used to it buddy. Not like politicians are getting any smarter than the voters electing them."

    • If anyone refers to "the cyber" it's a fair bet they know nothing about it.

    • by sconeu ( 64226 )

      Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!!!! I came here to make a similar point.

      There's a huge gap between regulating cryptocurrencies (such as discussed in the article) as opposed to, say, cryptography (which the UK is also trying to do, but is not the topic here).

      Frankly, I don't give a shit about regulation of cryptocurrencies, but I care very deeply about regulation of cryptography.

    • Peeves are great. "It's" is a contraction for "it is" or "it has". "in it's entirety" therefore means "in it is entirety" or "in it has entirety". Want to use a possessive pronoun? Use "its".

      It's easier for you to fix own language faux pas than to get others to fix theirs.

  • by i_ate_god ( 899684 ) on Monday October 30, 2023 @10:49AM (#63965902)

    Since crypto is a form of gambling, I see no reason for their not to be any regulations

  • by ebonum ( 830686 ) on Monday October 30, 2023 @10:53AM (#63965914)

    There needs to be generic laws governing trading and custody (holding someone else's assets on their behalf, like an exchange holding client's dollars and bitcoin).
    This is going to keep coming up. It doesn't matter if it is cryto or beanie babies. There are assets outside of registered securities which will be used as stores of value, speculation, gambling, money laundering, etc. Doesn't matter if it is wine, art, or collectable McDonald's toys. If I send in my wine to be stored at an auction house warehouse, they don't get to sell it, lend it, lose it, drink it, without explicit, well documented permission from me. Parking garages don't get to secretly lend out my car on Turo while I'm having dinner. SBF lent crypto/cash to Alameda. Not much different from the parking garage. Customers didn't know asset A was going to be lent out to B.

    Need to think in generics terms here. "Assets" that are not registered securities. The generic concept of custody. Trading of "Assets". Taxes on "Assets", promotion and marketing of "Assets", theft and return of "Assets". Etc.

    Then the next time this happens in some completely unpredictable space (such as NFTs), there shouldn't a call for "new laws". We're going to get laws that narrowly apply to cryto that will do nothing to stop the next "big thing" that leads to 100's of billions in losses. ("Stopping" might not be possible, but prosecution after the fact should be easy.)

    • by mad7777 ( 946676 )

      and how would this rule apply to fractional reserve banking?

      • Existing regulations already cope with this. There is a difference between a bank account where the bank can lend your money out to other people, and an e-money account such as PayPal where they can't.

  • This used to be a tech site. When a country talks about regulating crypto, that should everyone remind of the crypto wars of the end of the 20th century. It should also remind people that various countries are trying to rollback to that state. I should not have to read the summary to discover that this is about the MLM bullshit that is cryptocurrencies.
  • Nothing like destroying its world class financial industry. I guess BREXIT did not hurt it enough, so off to put backdoors in encryption. At least France may finally be able to lure part of that industry to their country.

The computer is to the information industry roughly what the central power station is to the electrical industry. -- Peter Drucker

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