Key Takeaways:
- This comes at a time when Rishi Sunak, Chancellor to the Exchequer(Minister) wanted to make UK a crypto-hub.
- The companies which were granted access to are CEX.IO, Revolut, Copper, Globalblock, and Moneybrain.
- No information regarding how long these firms will be permitted to work under this interim arrangement.
Under provisional registration status from the Financial Conduct Authority, the number of organizations authorized to provide crypto services to UK residents has decreased from 12 to five.
The government of the United Kingdom published a detailed strategy last week to turn the country into a global crypto powerhouse and a “hospitable place for crypto.”
The government has opted to regulate stablecoins as part of the plan, and the chancellor of the exchequer, Rishi Sunak, has asked the Royal Mint to establish a non-fungible token (NFT) before the summer. “It is my ambition to make the United Kingdom a global powerhouse for crypto-asset technology,” Sunak said, “and the policies we’ve detailed today will help to ensure that enterprises can invest, innovate, and scale-up in this nation.”
The UK’s financial regulator named CEX.IO, Revolut, Copper, Globalblock, and Moneybrain as companies in the crypto space allowed to operate in the country, in addition to the 34 registered crypto-asset firms the FCA has approved since August 2020, in a Thursday update to its list of “Cryptoasset firms with Temporary Registration.” On March 30, the FCA announced that it will extend the temporary registration status for “a small number of firms where it is strictly necessary,” which at the time included 12 entities.
It has registered 33 firms overall. “We have been reviewing crypto-asset firms’ applications to ensure they meet the minimum standards we expect that those who run these firms are fit and proper and that they have adequate systems to identify and prevent flows of money from crime,” a representative for the FCA recently remarked.
There is no information regarding how long these firms will be permitted to operate under this interim registration status. The FCA did not set a new date for approving or rejecting the firm’s registration, but it had previously extended the evaluation period from July 2021 to March 2022.
