UK could use Brexit to make new crypto law in next 12 months

Quick Take

  • Britain will use the “opportunity” of Brexit to make new crypto regulation that is different to the European Union.
  • Andrew Griffith, economic secretary to the U.K. Treasury, said “we’ve got the ability to move in an agile and proportionate way.”
  • A consultation period for new laws on exchanges, custody and lending ends on April 30. 

The UK government will use Brexit to carve a different regulatory program for crypto that could come into law in the next 12 months, according to Andrew Griffith, economic secretary to the Treasury.

“We’ve got control back of our rulebook, not something the UK has had for decades,” Griffith said in an interview with CNBC, referencing Britain's departure from the European Union. “So we’ve got the ability to move in an agile and proportionate way. And I’m definitely keen we make the most of that opportunity.”

The consultation period for Britain’s proposed crypto regulation ends on April 30 this year. The intention is to make Britain “a safe jurisdiction for cryptoasset activity to take place, fostering innovation and providing firms clarity over the planned regulatory framework.” The new law will particularly focus on “exchange activities, custody activities and lending activities.”

Britain and the EU are on different crypto regulation paths

The EU is taking a different path. Its proposals for new regulation on Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) are currently more detailed. They will focus on stablecoins, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), threats to financial stability and consumer protection.

Griffith said the UK's new crypto laws would run alongside traditional finance regulation. “Wherever possible, we want to see the same asset, the same transaction regulated in the same way. But there are some additional opportunities in the crypto asset or distributed ledger space and we want to take advantage of that,” Griffith told CNBC.

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Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said last year that he wanted to make “the UK a global hub for cryptoasset technology”.

The crypto industry might not want to get too excited at the notion that the UK will have a comprehensive new regulatory framework for crypto by this time next year. The government began a review of crypto promotion and marketing laws in 2020 and only published its proposed legislation three years later in March of this year. The law is yet to be passed.

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About Author

Jim is the former editor-in-chief of Insider's news division and the founding editorial director of DL News. Previously he was the founding editor of Business Insider UK. He has also been managing editor at Adweek, an advertising columnist at CBS Interactive, and a Knight-Bagehot Fellow at Columbia Business School. His work has appeared in Slate, Salon, The Independent, MTV, The Nation and AOL. His investigative journalism changed the law in the US First Circuit Court of Appeals (U.S. v. Kravetz), the Third Circuit Court of Appeals (North Jersey Media v. Ashcroft), New Jersey (In Re El-Atriss), and New York State (Mosallem v. Berenson). The US Supreme Court cited his work on the death penalty in the concurrence to Baze v. Rees, on the issue of whether lethal injection is cruel or unusual. He won the Neal award for business journalism in 2005 for a series investigating bribes and kickbacks in the advertising business. You can reach him on Twitter @Jim_Edwards or Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimedwards123/

Editor

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