Treasury unveils plans to regulate stable coin payments
The Treasury has unveiled plans to regulate stable coins today as ministers grapple with how to bring the technology under financial watchdogs’ control.
In a speech at fintech industry summit Innovate Finance, city minister John Glen said that ministers would be legislating to bring certain types of stable coin, crypto currencies pegged to the value of real world currencies, into “our payment framework” and “creating the conditions for stable coins issuers and service providers to operate and grow in the UK”.
Glen said the move to legislate was part of a wider shift from government “to deliver a world leading regulatory regime for stable coins”.
The Treasury is now also eyeing up a number of new measures to regulate the space after it has boomed to over $3tn.
“We think the market is trading sufficiently for us to look at regulating a broader set of crypto activities, including trading of tokens like Bitcoin, and we will consult on a world leading regime for the rest of the crypto market to a regime that facilitate safe and sustainable innovation,” he said.
It came as the Treasury unveiled a swathe of new measures to bring the space under regulation, with the UK jurisdiction Task Force, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Voss, tasked with developing a new set of laws for legislative framework for the technology.
The taskforce would undertake a new project to consider the legal status of decentralised autonomous organisations, he said.
More to follow…