UK to deliver comprehensive crypto regulation framework by early 2025

A draft regulatory framework for crypto assets will be ready in the United Kingdom early next year, a Treasury official promised at City & Financial Global’s Tokenisation Summit in London on Nov. 21.

Some regulations were expected last summer, but a general election overturned those plans along with the Conservative government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Now, Keir Starmer’s Labour government, which took office on July 5, will present the regulations.

A comprehensive framework

Economic Secretary to the Treasury Tulip Siddiq said the regulations would cover stablecoins and staking services, as well as cryptocurrency itself, Bloomberg reports. Siddiq said:

“Doing everything in a single phase is simpler and it just makes more sense.”

Stablecoin’s use cases do not make it a good fit for existing payment services regulation, Siddiq said. Stablecoin legislation has been in the works since the release of a suite of discussion papers in October 2023 but was never expected earlier than 2025.

The crypto industry hopes that staking can escape being designated as a “collective investment scheme,” as that brings with it additional restrictions. Siddiq said at the summit:

“For me, it doesn’t make sense for staking services to have this treatment. The government intends to proceed with removing this legal uncertainty accordingly.”

The UK needs to get a grip on crypto

The former Conservative government expressed the ambition to make the United Kingdom a cryptocurrency hub, but so far, the country has often been seen as a challenging regulatory environment. Blame for that perception is often placed on the Financial Conduct Authority, which is a regulator independent of the government.

Meanwhile, the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation will come into full force by the end of the year. With the continent offering regulatory certainty and the United States’ Trump administration being viewed as pro-crypto, the UK is looking less and less attractive to the multibillion-dollar crypto industry.

The former government had promised new crypto regulations in July, but that was not possible. So far, the Labour government’s only attempt at crypto regulation has been a bill proposed in September to clarify the legal status of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), cryptocurrency and carbon credits by declaring them property.

Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/uk-crypto-regulation-framework-2025