After Liz Truss won the election to become the country’s new prime minister, the future of Britain as a crypto center is still up in the air; her campaign has not reacted to several requests for comment about her future policies for digital assets.
After Liz Truss won the contest to become the country’s new prime minister, Britain’s prospects as a crypto center remain unknown, leaving business owners and investors wondering what regulations, if any, would be in place for the digital asset sector under new leadership.
Truss, who won the race to lead the Conservative Party on Monday by defeating Rishi Sunak, hasn’t spoken much about her plans for virtual currencies thus yet. Multiple requests for comment on her upcoming rules for digital assets have gone unanswered by her team.
In contrast, Sunak had established himself as a supporter of cryptocurrency while serving as Chancellor, announcing in April a strategy meant to revive the UK’s standing as a pioneer in financial technology. That included a plea for crypto infrastructure to be accepted, for stablecoins to be regulated similarly to non-banks, and for the UK’s Royal Mint to develop its own nonfungible token.
After Sunak left the cabinet in July, the will to pass some of those ideas into law waned. Other crypto initiatives might be put on hold permanently as Truss inherits a daunting in-tray that includes the UK’s cost-of-living issue and impending recession.
“Detail in crypto policy is essential, “Jackson Mueller, Securrency’s head of policy and government relations, stated. “Aside from a few public pronouncements, it’s unclear how Ms. Truss will handle crypto asset regulation or which particular concerns she plans to concentrate on.”
Businesses that spent months building connections with Sunak and his colleagues at the Treasury will now have to start again as a result of Truss’s victory. Who Truss chooses as her next chancellor, a position that perhaps has the most impact on crypto as a strategic priority for the Treasury is a significant unknown.
With only a 2018 tweet in which she stated that digital assets should be accepted “in a way that doesn’t confine their potential,” Truss has contributed to her reputation as an unknown person to people in the sector.
It would be beneficial to have some clarification on the direction of travel, given that the Treasury, Bank of England, and FCA all have their own cryptocurrency agendas “Bradley Duke, co-CEO and creator of the ETC Group, a supplier of cryptocurrency exchange-traded products, stated. According to him, “a clear and coherent policy framework on crypto, followed by implementation,” is what he hoped for.”
There were worries that Britain was losing its position as a global leader in financial innovation after a number of cryptocurrency companies left the UK in recent years for failing to adhere to the Financial Conduct Authority’s strict anti-money laundering standards.
