Many governments are not a big fan of cryptocurrencies, but they do see that some tokens are very useful. However, the major crash of recent months has also made it clear that clear rules are needed in this sector. Therefore, In the first quarter of 2022, the United Kingdom held a large number of talks with top people from the crypto industry, probably on regulation.
A log of meetings with British ministers, published on the UK government website, shows a huge list of conversations with the financial industry, including crypto. UK Secretary of State for Economic Affairs John Glen held several talks with major institutions, such as Blackrock, Fidelity and virtually every major investment bank. But also several crypto companies and their top people came to visit.
For example, Glen spoke with Circle, which, among other things, issues the popular USDC stablecoin. Major crypto companies such as Binance, Paxos and Coinbase also took their turn. The cloud service provider Epos Now was also about crypto, and the same applies to the venture capital funds Entrepreneur First, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Kingsway Capital. Glen also spoke to Goldman Sachs, the major US investment bank taking crypto more and more seriously.
One could speculate that the crypto cloud is in a big bubble (soap bubble) and it won’t end until central banks like the Federal Reserve stop raising interest rates. They raise these interest rates to keep up with rising inflation. In this uncertain macroeconomic situation, crypto is often seen as risky.
The UK seems to be a bit of a fickle back on crypto. The Bank of England, the country’s central bank, has been pushing for crypto more often, but is also working on a so-called central bank digital currency (CBDC). In contrast, the UK’s finance minister, Rishi Sunak, recently stated that he wants to make the country a ” global crypto hub.” The country is also working on stablecoin regulation after the Terra (LUNA) crash.
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