Breaking: UK Passes Bill to Recognize Crypto as Financial Assets

The United Kingdom (UK) has made a proactive move to bolster its financial ecosystem as the Financial Services and Markets Bill (FSMB) has received the Royal Assent.

The UK Financial Markets Bill

The UK Government has been working on the Financial Services and Markets Bill for quite some time and with its passage, it believes it will play a central role in delivering the Government’s vision to grow the economy and create an open, sustainable, and technologically advanced financial services sector.

Among other things, the FSMB provides a very defined pathway for crypto assets to be regulated as financial products in order to support their safe adoption in the UK. The need to release a functional regulation remains one of the biggest subjects in the United States and the obvious advancement in the UK has fueled concerns that America may be falling behind in embracing futuristic innovation.

The newly signed Bill in the UK is even more robust as it considers the broader innovation bordering on blockchain technology. Notably, the Bill turned Act “establishes ‘sandboxes’ that can facilitate the use of new technologies such as blockchain in financial markets.”

“2023 is proving to be a banner year for reforming our financial services,” said Andrew Griffith, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, “This landmark piece of legislation gives us control of our financial services rulebook, so it supports UK businesses and consumers and drives growth..”

Setting Good Example

By virtue of the assent to the Bill, the United Kingdom is now setting a good example that other nations hoping to regulate the crypto ecosystem can follow after. 

The UK now comes off as one of the most advanced nations in the G7 with a spelled out and defined mandate to regulate cryptocurrencies as regulated products. While the European Union, through its Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation, is also making advances to regulate crypto, the UK is arguably in the lead as implementation is billed to be ushered in faster.

With Prime Minister Rishi Sunak always expressing his wish to turn the UK into a crypto hub, this Bill is now the most emphatic move to achieve this goal.