As he prepares new post-Brexit laws, UK’s financial services minister Andrew Griffith promised a deeper involvement with the cryptocurrency industry on Wednesday.
Rishi Sunak, the country’s current prime minister and former finance minister, declared last April that he wanted to make the nation a hub for cryptocurrency. However, a consultation on regulating financial technology is now overdue.
At Wednesday’s parliamentary discussion on crypto regulation, Griffith, a Sunak’s Conservative Party member, pledged to have six roundtables with representatives from the sector in 2023.
The United Kingdom’s cryptocurrency market is eager to understand the regulations governing its operations and has been waiting for regulatory clarification. As he attempted to allay worries about the Financial Conduct Authority’s staff members’ sluggish registration procedures, Griffith acknowledged the value of speed in a business that moves quickly.
He expressed his keen interest in how quickly British regulators act as they work to create an agile, appropriate financial regulatory structure. He added that if a financial system has slow latency or doesn’t run quickly, it cannot be competitive on a global scale.
Griffth stated that in order to permit the safe use of this technology while ensuring regulatory clarity and promoting financial technology investment, they will present a “timely, sensible and balanced” legislation.
“We’ll bring forward timely, sensible, and balanced regulation in order to allow the safe use of this technology” while ensuring regulatory clarity and facilitating financial-technology investment.”
Prior to Christmas 2022, Griffith had already committed to releasing a policy document on crypto regulations using the new authority provided by the Financial Services and Markets Bill. In a fast-moving field, “that consultative process sometimes makes things a little longer than one might wish,” he noted, predicting that it would be “a matter of certain weeks, not months.”
The United Kingdom’s cryptocurrency market is eager to understand the regulations governing its operations and has been waiting for regulatory clarification. Griffith recognized the value of speed in a sector that moves quickly,
The leader of a bipartisan parliamentary crypto group and a lawmaker from the opposition Scottish National Party, Lisa Cameron, said she backed the government’s plan but wanted more information on timing. She emphasized that almost a year had passed since the government unveiled its historic plan to turn the United Kingdom into a hub for cryptocurrency investment. She pushed for the regulatory framework to be advanced quickly because she believes the UK must “first and foremost” protect its citizens.
