The FCA has maintained a tough line on cryptocurrencies, requiring UK businesses that allow people to buy or sell Bitcoin and other digital assets to pass checks to be part of a business register.
Only 33 companies are on the crypto-asset ledger and 22 on a temporary list, allowing them to trade until the end of this month. By comparison, the FCA says 110 companies it had designated as continuing to operate without being registered have since closed.
The regulator said: “We regularly warn consumers that crypto-assets are unregulated and high risk, which means people are very unlikely to get protection if things go wrong, so people must be prepared to lose all their money if they choose to invest in them. “
A Bitcoin ATM operator, Gidiplus, recently lost a judicial review trying to overturn the FCA’s decision to deny it a license.
The regulator had told the company that its weaker identity checks on users depositing less than £250 meant there was a risk of ‘smurfing’, in which large numbers of ‘mules’ deposit small amounts for escape detection.
Olumide Osunkoya, the owner of Gidiplus, said his machines were no longer operational. He said he sold them to a buyer in Eastern Europe, where controls are less stringent, and other operators in the UK are doing the same.
Another owner, Gadcet, said he was no longer in business.
The chief executive of Blockchain.com, Britain’s largest cryptocurrency firm, recently slammed the FCA, saying the regulator’s stance meant the UK was falling behind Europe in innovation. of cryptocurrency.
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Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
This notice was published: 2022-03-11 07:48:19
