The UK Finance Minister said he will investigate claims that licensed crypto companies are having difficulty opening business accounts in the country.
On Tuesday, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt agreed to meet with the nation's Economic Secretary to the Treasury, Bim Afolami, to discuss the matter. Hunt was responding to a ask raised by the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Crypto and Digital Assets Lisa Cameron about the difficulties faced by UK-licensed crypto companies.
Hunt responded that he would arrange a meeting with the UK Treasury to investigate. He also took the opportunity to say that โthe UK, and London in particular, has become the global crypto hub.โ
"To ensure that the cryptocurrency market can really take off as planned in a responsible manner, we must regulate it, which is why we have introduced legislation for stablecoins and for the promotion of cryptocurrency services," added the Minister of Finance . .
In April 2022, while serving as the country's finance minister, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak revealed plans to transform the nation into "a global crypto hub." The U.K. has since passed laws to further that goal, such as new regulations to oversee the country's Digital Securities Sandbox initiative.
The new UK regulations for testing digital securities
The new regulations will give the country's financial watchdogs rules to oversee a sandbox environment for tokenized securitiesaccording to an official publication.
The regulations will be for the UK's Digital Securities Sandbox, DSS, and will come into force on January 8, 2024. They are part of the UK government's Financial Services and Markets Act 2023, or FSMA.
The new rules set general limitations on what can take place within the sandbox and which participants are eligible to participate. The sandbox will allow regulators and companies to test solutions, including distributed ledger technology and securities tokenization.
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