Europe’s leading provider of business accounts and trading services for the digital asset economy, BCB Group; and partners and investors in blockchain, AI and IOT, Outlier Ventures join CryptoUK’s Executive Committee. Law firm CMS joins the community as an Institutional Member.

Is FATF’s Draft Guidance DeFi’s Death Knell? Exploring The Provisions & Their Implications For Digital Financial Innovation. Read our blog here.

A large number of the organisation’s members are seeking to be admitted to the Financial Conduct Authority’s Anti Money Laundering register. However, many have reported an arduous process and lack of feedback from the regulator. We urge the chancellor to step in our open letter here.  

Pure Digital is an interbank marketplace for cryptocurrency price discovery and exchange of wholesale risk. It will provide a best-in-class primary institutional market; with a consortium of banks as liquidity providers, custodians, and clearers.

We’re delighted to welcome Compliancy Services Ltd, one of the UK’s leading providers of compliance consultancy and regtech services, to our membership. We look forward to working with them to improve industry best practices and drive digital asset adoption in the UK.

Complinacy Services help firms that are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority or the Prudential Regulation Authority to become authorised, manage their ongoing compliance and regulatory obligations and empower their staff with focused compliance training.

KCL is one of the oldest institutions of higher education in the UK, with a worldwide reputation for research. Its FinWork Futures Research Centre investigates the future of financial work and the challenges and opportunities that new technologies bring.

Exmo is a British cryptocurrency exchange. The platform was established in 2014 and is constantly expanding its functionality, adding new assets to the listing, and, most importantly, increasing the number of customers.

Binance.UK, the British affiliate of the global blockchain company behind the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, today announced it is joining CryptoUK, the U.K.’s self-regulatory trade association representing the digital asset sector, as an Executive Member. Binance.UK will assume a seat on the CryptoUK Executive Committee, alongside Coinbase, Coin Shares, CryptoCompare, eToro and Ripple. Together this group of industry experts and stakeholders collaborate to lead the Association’s strategic direction. This includes the Association’s Code of Conduct, policy positions and governance to ensure the U.K. fulfils its global leadership potential in this quickly developing and expanding industry.

Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) Further to the EC non paper on a EU framework for markets in crypto-assets published in May (see summary here). CUK has obtained the final non-paper released in July. We are pleased to see that the commission has broadly listened to the industry and is proposing a bespoke regime for non security tokens (payment & utility). Also. that the commission is not considering stablecoins as a form of e-money.  For crypto-assets which do not qualify as financial instruments, ‘crypto-asset’, ‘utility token’, ‘asset-backed crypto assets’ and ‘significant asset-backed crypto-assets’ the Commission will propose an all encompassing bespoke regime – the Markets in..Read More

Coinbase were excited to announce that they had agreed to acquire Tagomi, the leading crypto prime brokerage platform. They stated that the acquisition will bolster their offerings for advanced traders and the most sophisticated crypto investors. Crypto prime brokerage, offers institutional clients easier access to liquidity, custody, lending and other products. Prime brokerage has been a major offering of many financial instruments for a numbers  of years. However, in crypto industry is somewhat at its infancy. Link to coinbase blog.

In February CUK hosted the HMRC and our members to discuss the past, current and future developments regarding taxation of crypto-assets in the UK. Highlights of the session included HMRC education update Internal communications 2hr CA training sessions for all HMRC front line staff External communications Guidance (Individual’s and Corporates) published in 2019 The guidance will be transferred into a leaflet – Apr20 Working with traditional tax agents HMRC operated roundtables with Lawyers, accountants, academics etc Working with industry CUK & GDF CUK questions HMRC to seek further clarity on the following Consistency within the UK Global consistency Stablecoins &..Read More

On Tuesday 24th July, CryptoUK members travelled to the FCA’s offices in Stratford to discuss their experiences of maintaining compliance with anti-money laundering regulations, and preparedness to comply with the upcoming implementation of the Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (5MLD). As part of the roundtable discussion, CryptoUK sought to outline the key challenges and considerations the FCA should be aware of as 5MLD comes into effect in January 2020, including the need to communicate changes with smaller firms who do not necessarily have the resources to keep up-to-date with new obligations. The discussion was part of an ongoing series of conversations..Read More

Following the Cryptoassets Taskforce report in October, the FCA published a consultation on where they believed cryptoassets fit into existing FCA regulation. In order to clearly separate where it holds competency, the consultation breaks cryptoassets into three categories: Exchange tokens Security tokens Utility tokens The Cryptoassets Guidance consultation, which can be found here , closed in April, with the FCA’s response expected in Summer 2019. The consultation will be followed by separate consultations by the FCA and HM Treasury on expanding the regulatory perimeter, proposals to possibly ban crypto-derivatives from the retail market, and the transposition of the Fifth Anti-Money..Read More

The House of Commons Treasury Select Committee published its report on the Digital Currencies Inquiry, following over 50 submissions from academics, businesses, regulators and others, along with oral evidence that included CryptoUK Chair Iqbal Gandham. The report can be found here.