The former UK chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond claimed that the trading of digital assets lacked a regulatory framework.
Concerns about the UK falling behind its European Union rivals in the regulation of cryptocurrencies have been expressed by a former Chancellor of the United Kingdom.
From 2016 to 2019, the United Kingdom’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, told Bloomberg that there has been a glaring lack of coherence and direction in crypto policy.
“Particularly in the area of digital asset trading, I feel that the UK has missed a trick […] We are getting very close to the point where it will be too late. Other jurisdictions are racing ahead of us.”
“The problem is that there are no regulations, and nobody quite knows where they stand, right? It’s a bit of a wild-west, and has gained, frankly, a mixed reputation, particularly among policymakers and politicians and the public.”
He also emphasized the importance of building a digital trading infrastructure to make the UK a center for trading tokenized traditional assets like tokenized bonds and shares.
“Getting this right, getting the rules around digital trading right, will be an essential prerequisite for being a player in the digitization of traditional financial assets.”
“The jurisdictions that have embraced this technology that have regulated it properly and effectively will be the ones that develop these markets and they will become the new hubs.”
Despite the U.K. government’s assurances that it would draft legislation to control the cryptocurrency industry in May, the former minister’s critiques nevertheless surfaced.
When it comes to regulating cryptocurrencies, Hammond noted that while the nation has historically been “quite nimble in embracing new technology,” this hasn’t been as evident. He added that this is probably because of a combination of a “bandwidth issue” and a “capacity issue.”
“This is a very new area of technology. It’s very difficult for public sector bodies with public sector pay structures to recruit the best and the brightest into these areas.”
“Personally, I think the [Financial Conduct Authority] FCA should have gone to the industry and said we need secondees. We can’t, you know, we can’t hire the people we need. We need the industry, to provide us with the talent to work up the regimes we need to introduce.”
In defense of the regulators, Hammond claimed that they had been under extreme stress as a result of coping with the effects of Brexit, COVID-19, and its impact on their own working arrangements.
Hammond is no stranger to the cryptocurrency field; since October 2011, he has worked as a senior advisor for copper.co, a start-up company based in London that offers custodial and infrastructure services for the digital asset market.
