The UK has ruled out the possibility of having a strategic Bitcoin or crypto sanctuary, unlike the US
“I don’t think it’s suitable for our market,” said Emma Reynolds, economic secretary at the Ministry of Finance, who spoke at the Financial Times Digital Asset Summit in London on May 6.
Reynolds added that the US has changed course under President Trump, “that’s not our plan.” The UK cannot quickly follow Washington’s lead in Bitcoin accumulation, but Reynolds explained that it has been thrown into the US when it comes to regulatory cooperation.
She also said talks between British and American officials continue, a “regulatory forum” is ongoing and plans to make its debut in June.
Rather than a reserve, the UK is considering decryption, which means that it is more immediate use of the blockchain. Reynolds said the government is currently seeking providers to issue sovereign obligations via distributed ledger technology, and the contract is expected to be signed at the end of the summer.
The UK is also going in a different direction than the EU’s MICA framework and prefers a principled approach rather than current financial regulations. MICA regulations apply to cryptocurrency issuers such as Stablecoins, utility tokens, and asset reference tokens.
“The same risk, the same regulatory approach,” Reynolds said he argued that crypto companies should be controlled by regulations, just like traditional finances.
However, she acknowledged that fully decentralized systems such as Bitcoin pose their own regulatory challenges. “Some of these things are a bit amorphous,” Reynolds said. “There’s a lot that the government can do.”