Chief US exchange regulator equates cryptocurrencies with securities according to Howey test criteria list . Which were developed in the middle of the last century and uses this as one of the main arguments

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), , is actively increasing pressure on the cryptocurrency industry. The main U.S. exchange regulator has already filed lawsuits against two major cryptocurrency exchanges. The agency is making a number of allegations against both exchanges. And the main one is the recognition of a number of cryptocurrency assets. Which are traded on the platforms as unregistered securities, falling under the competence of the regulator.

In the lawsuits, the SEC highlighted a list of crypto-assets on both exchanges, which collectively includes 19 coins. And several of them, including Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA), Polygon (MATIC), Filecoin (FIL), Sandbox (SAND), Decentraland (MANA), Algorand (ALGO), Axie Infinity (AXS), are listed in the charges for both venues.

According to the documents, they all fall under several of the agency’s designated criteria in one way or another. That’s pre-sale or fundraising. As well as promises to improve the project through continuous business development and marketing, the use of social networks to demonstrate the capabilities and benefits of the project.

The SEC uses the criteria of the so-called Howey test. This test, created by a 1946 Supreme Court decision. Which was related to the Florida citrus plantation deals. And is the basis of the SEC’s securities control authority. Which are considered “investment contracts.” And do not fall under familiar categories such as stocks and bonds.

Although the concept originated in the middle of the last century. But the SEC still applies it to actual assets, including cryptocurrencies. Because the U.S. has yet to develop a unified regulatory approach to crypto-assets. And it may be the one that ultimately forms the basis for cryptocurrency regulation.

Florida citrus plantations equated to cryptocurrencies

The Securities Act of 1933 lists financial instruments. Which fall within the definition of a security. And therefore within the scope of SEC regulation. They are stocks, bonds, bills of exchange, security-based swaps and more than a dozen other instruments. The document also cites the term “investment contract,” which arose as a result of a court decision related to the Howey test.

At the time, the SEC sued the W.J. Howey Company and Howey-in-the-Hills Service for selling citrus plantation lots in Florida to the public along with a service contract. Which gave Howey-in-the-Hills the right to lease and own the plots. Howey, with the necessary experience and equipment, remained responsible for growing, harvesting and marketing. The purchasers of the plots received a share of the profits.

Based on this arrangement, the commission accused Howey of offering and selling unregistered securities in violation of the Securities Act. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court. The judge concluded that these transactions clearly belonged to investment contracts under the Act. And introduced the very criteria that became known as the Howey test.

It includes four key elements that must be met to be considered a securities transaction.

1. investment of money. This can be any type of capital, such as cash, checks or current cryptocurrencies.

2. Joint venture. This means that the investor’s income is tied to the success of the entire venture. Not just the success of its individual investments.

3. a reasonable expectation of return. This means that investors must have a reasonable expectation of profit, either through their own efforts or the efforts of others.

4. Profits derived from the efforts of others. This means that investors must rely on the efforts of a promoter or third party to make a profit.

The Howey test is still used to this day by the SEC to determine whether certain financial products are securities. Some examples of assets and transactions that have been found to be securities under the Howey test. Also include initial coin offerings (“ICO”), tokenized assets, and investment contracts.

New guide to applying the Howey test to cryptocurrencies

The SEC has issued guidance on applying the Howey test to cryptocurrencies and other blockchain-based assets. The SEC has stated that many cryptocurrencies and tokenized assets are securities. Because they meet the four elements of the Hoey test.

One high-profile example is the case of the failed Telegram messenger ICO. That’s when Pavel Durov was able to raise a record $1.7 billion on the sale of Gram tokens to qualified investors. In 2019, the SEC filed a lawsuit against Telegram. And in doing so, claiming that Gram tokens are securities. Also that Telegram violated the law by conducting an unregistered sale of assets. In the complaint, the SEC also cited the Howey test. And argued that Gram tokens meet all four criteria of the test.

Another high-profile example is the case surrounding Ripple’s XRP token. In December 2020, the SEC filed a lawsuit against Ripple. In doing so, claiming that XRP is a security and that Ripple violated securities laws by conducting the initial sale of the tokens. And in its complaint, the SEC again cited the Howey test.

How projects try to bypass the Howey citrus test

Focusing on the U.S. market, crypto businesses are forced to consider the Howey test. Now some projects are calling their assets a governance token. Which is used to vote the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) created under the project. However, such tokens are also traded on cryptocurrency exchanges. And are valued in the billions of dollars, so it remains to be seen. How regulators will behave towards them in the future.

Many projects offer their tokens only outside the US. In doing so, they restrict U.S. users from trading or participating in token giveaways (airdrops). Some blockchain services reach an agreement with the SEC. In doing so, they often pay significant fines if their asset is found to be a security.

Our experts note that Coinbase, meanwhile, intends to defend its position. It filed a countersuit against the SEC. In doing so, intending to obtain clear rules from the regulator for dealing with crypto-assets. The platform has openly stated that it has no plans to delist tokens. Which the SEC considers to be securities and wind down staking services. According to Coinbase, the company has more than $5 billion on its balance sheet to maintain operations. And to pay legal fees.

Cumberland withdrew $46 million in Ethereum, 23 million BUSD and other coins from leading cryptocurrency exchanges

Cumberland, one of the largest cryptocurrency market makers, withdrew about $70 million from Coinbase and Binance exchanges in the last two days. The company took $46 million in Ethereum, 23 million BUSD ($23 million). As well as other coins after it became known that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued the two exchanges.

Cumberland is a subsidiary of Chicago-based trading firm DRW, created in 2014. It provides liquidity on leading centralized and decentralized crypto exchanges.

Cumberland took about 20,000 ETH ($37 million) from the Coinbase exchange and 4.85,000 ETH ($9 million) from Binance, according to analyst service Lookonchain.

In addition to Ethereum, Cumberland withdrew other cryptocurrencies, analysts noted. Among them were tokens Axie Infinity (AXS), Shiba Inu (SHIB), Compound (COMP), Chainlink (LINK), Curve DAO (CRV) and Aave (AAVE).

A week earlier, in late May, Cumberland stopped trading Firecoin (FIL) because the SEC classified the cryptocurrency as a security token. That is, assets that fall under the definition of securities.

A security token is a crypto-asset that represents a certain amount of ownership of something. For example, part of a company. They can be issued by a business or government and serve the same purpose as securities (stocks).

In addition, Nansen data shows that Cumberland has withdrawn more than 23 million BUSD from Binance in the past 24 hours, noted cryptojournalist Colin Wu. The market maker transferred them to Paxos, the company that issued the stablecoin. The firm has been banned from issuing new tokens, but it continues to redeem old ones.

It also became known that Robinhood will review its work with some cryptocurrencies.

Our experts note that Robinhood provides users with access to 18 cryptocurrencies. These include Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA) and Polygon (MATIC). These have now been called unregistered securities by the SEC in lawsuits against cryptocurrency exchanges.

The U.S. regulator named securities as the closest competitors of Ethereum. Our experts told us what risks this brings for ETH

From June 5 through June 6, cryptocurrency rates reacted to the SEC’s lawsuit against two major exchanges with a dramatic drop. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies fell in price, but by the morning of June 7, they partially recovered their losses. Ethereum was no exception and on June 6 updated its low from May 25 at $1802.

In lawsuits against two major exchanges, the SEC named several cryptocurrencies as securities. These assets reacted with fall of rates more strongly than others and fell in price by 6-15%.

In the first lawsuit were called securities: Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA), Polygon (MATIC), Filecoin (FIL). As well as Cosmos (ATOM), Sandbox (SAND), Decentraland (MANA). And Algorand (ALGO), Axie Infinity (AXS), COTI (COTI).

In the second lawsuit, Chiliz (CHZ), Flow (FLOW), Internet Computer (ICP) joined them. As well as NEAR Protocol (NEAR), Voyager VGX (VGX), Dash (DASH) and NEXO (NEXO).

Despite the fact that the commission named Ethereum competitor coins (e.g., Solana), the largest ETH itself avoided a similar fate. None of the lawsuits mentioned it as a security.

Why the SEC chose the cryptocurrencies it named in the lawsuits

The SEC sampling algorithm is completely incomprehensible. And it defies logic, our experts note. Either the initiators of this process have outdated data. Even from the time of PoW mechanism in Ethereum network (till September 2022). Or it’s a “show punishment” for trading “tokens nobody needs,” says our expert.

SEC head Gary Gensler told CNBC that cryptocurrencies are essentially unnecessary at all. “We already have a digital currency. It’s called the U.S. dollar, the euro or the yen,” Gensler said.

The very arguments of the U.S. regulator regarding the recognition of PoS and DPoS (validators, not miners) projects as securities are “ridiculous.” But in the moment, these accusations can “create panic among investors” and provoke a local price collapse.

Long-term prospects for Ethereum are positive

If we consider the long-term prospects of Ethereum. It has much more growth potential than even Bitcoin. Because BTC’s growth comes from its status as the first cryptocurrency. As well as popularity and scarcity, which led to the leading position in infrastructure development.

For ETH the main growth driver is the area of decentralized finance (DeFi), says our expert. DeFi is still in its infancy. And in the future it will be able to push the price of ETH, which provides the infrastructure for DeFi projects.

Short-term ETH prospects

For short planning horizons on Ethereum, things are very complicated. Our experts note that on the one hand, Ethereum benefited from the fact that it was “forgotten to be mentioned” in the lawsuits.

But on the other hand, if ETH will be “remembered” later. It could repeat the fate of those coins that are already on the SEC list. As some investors exit from these coins, the assets are rejected by the platforms. Therefore, the risks remain, our Crypto Upvotes expert warned.

Total daily volume of trading on 3 leading decentralized exchanges increased by $950 million in 48 hours

Average daily trading volume on the three largest decentralized exchanges (DEX) has jumped 180% in the past 48 hours, according to CoinMarketCap. Trader activity on centralized exchanges (CEX) has also increased.

Trading volume on Uniswap v3 (Ethereum) rose from $322 million to $999 million, and on Uniswap v3 (Arbitrum One) from $152 million to $322 million and on Curve (Ethereum) from $54 million to $157 million. These three exchanges account for 55.6% of total DEX trading volume in the past 24 hours. Within two days, their total trading volume increased from $528 million to $1.47 billion (180%), an increase of $950 million.

At the same time the trading volumes at 12 large centralized exchanges also remained at maximum values for the second day in a row over the last month. As of the morning of June 6 it reached $105 billion (the highest since April 28), while on the morning of June 7 it was $97 billion, according to Coinglass. During the last month, volumes have only twice reached $100 billion. And on average, they have ranged from $30 billion to $80 billion.

The surge in exchange activity comes as the U.S. exchange regulator has begun litigation against leading cryptocurrency exchanges.

Our experts note that currencies reacted with a sharp drop. But by June 7, they had recovered to the marks where they were before the reports about the filing of lawsuits by the SEC.

Tether has invested in building a Bitcoin mining platform in El Salvador

Tether has participated in the first round of $1 billion in financing to build a Bitcoin farm in El Salvador. The company announced that it would provide capital and “bring its expertise in energy, equipment and communications”. Especially for the construction of Volcano Energy, a 241MW renewable energy generation park, the world’s largest site.

The site selected for construction will house photovoltaic cells to generate 169MW of solar power. And wind power generation equipment for 72 MW. This will enable the placement of mining equipment with computing power in excess of 1.3 EH/s, it said.

The total global hash rate on the bitcoin network on June 5 hovered around 361 EH/s, according to Minerstat.

The Tether says that by investing in green energy around the world. With this, it aims to become one of the leading providers and investors in the global renewable energy and mining infrastructure.

Our experts note that the company previously reported net income of $1.5 billion for the first quarter of the year, and announced its decision to spend up to 15% of realized operating profits on Bitcoin purchases.

At the end of May, Tether also announced that it was investing in renewable energy generation and the launch of bitcoin mining in Uruguay using that energy.

The farm in El Salvador, Tether claims, will be the largest in the world. In early May, one of the largest US miners, Marathon Digital, and developer Zero Two announced the creation of two Bitcoin mining platforms in Abu Dhabi, UAE, under equipment with a total capacity of 250 MW

French fashion house Louis Vuitton has announced that it will soon begin selling a series of tokens in the form of the brand’s iconic trunk. NFTs will only be available to “select customers.”

French fashion house Louis Vuitton has announced the launch of the VIA Treasure Trunk, a digital copy of its iconic product, the treasure chest, in the form of NFTs.

There will be “only a few hundred” NFTs available for purchase. And each Treasure Trunk is priced at €39k. Waitlist entries will begin on June 8, and select participants will have access to a preview of the tokens on June 14. You’ll be able to buy them starting June 16, including for cryptocurrencies.

The Louis Vuitton Chest appeared in the mid-19th century and has since become a hallmark of the brand. NFT, called VIA Treasure Trunk, is designed as a token linked to the identity of the owner (SBT).

Soulbound tokens (SBTs) are unique non-financial tokens that are not transferable. Such NFTs are issued in a single instance and are permanently tied to a single blockchain address.

The company explained that the NFT Treasure Trunk will give owners access to the VIA portal (the brand’s NFT store). And which will act as a gateway for those wishing to purchase other Louis Vuitton digital items. Each collectible from the new releases will give buyers exclusive access to its physical counterparts. And so the company promises, without explaining what the exclusivity of this access is.

The SBT format prohibits owners from transferring or selling Treasure Trunk tokens after purchase. While “ensuring that only a select few will have access to the VIA portal,” Louis Vuitton said. Users will then be able to sell future digital collectibles purchased through VIA on other NFT marketplaces.

Our experts note that this is not the fashion house’s first experience in the digital space. In 2021, Louis Vuitton released a video game called Louis The Game to celebrate the 200th anniversary of its founder Louis Vuitton. And in which players had to find 30 hidden NFTs.

Atomic Wallet cryptocurrency wallet representative said that his team is “doing everything possible” to recover the stolen funds. And advised the victims of the incident to track the hacker’s transactions themselves

An Atomic Wallet cryptocurrency hacker who stole about $35 million in user funds. He used Sinbad.io, a cryptomixer popular with North Korean hackers, to launder the stolen funds, Elliptic blockchain analysts said.

Atomic Wallet, a cryptocurrency service for non-custodial storage of digital assets, was hacked in early June. The attack stole Bitcoin, Ethereum (ETH), Tether (USDT), Dogecoin (DOGE), Litecoin (LTC), BNB (BNB) and Polygon (MATIC) totaling at least $35 million from Atomic customers.

Elliptic found out that the hacker started transferring funds via Sinbad.io, a transaction anonymization service. And which is used by the North Korean hacker group Lazarus Group. North Korean hackers laundered over $100 million through Sinbad io.

Analysts have not named the amount of Atomic users’ funds spent through the mixer. But they did say that Sinbad.io is probably a revamped version of Blender.io, a service heavily used by Lazarus Group. And the first mixer to be sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department.

The Atomic Wallet team is “doing everything they can” to recover the stolen funds. But creating a concrete plan is possible only after the investigation is complete. Atomic Wallet marketing director Roland Sede told Cointelegraph.

According to him, having victims of the attack track and report illegal transfers to cryptocurrency exchanges could prevent scammers from withdrawing funds. For its part, the site is doing just that. Because “the more attention hackers get, the harder it is for them (funds) to move them,” Sede said.

Our experts note that according to Atomic Wallet, the hack affected “less than 1%” of the service’s monthly active users. The attack was also stopped on Saturday, May 3. But Twitter users responded with screenshots showing that their funds were stolen even after that time.

Our Crypto Upvotes experts analyzed the claims of the regulator and told about their impact and implications for the entire crypto industry

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed lawsuits against two of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges – Binance and Coinbase. The regulator is making a number of allegations against both. And the main ones are the recognition of a number of cryptocurrency assets that are traded on the platforms as unregistered securities. Which fall under the jurisdiction of the regulator.

In the June 5 lawsuit against Binance and the June 6 lawsuit against Coinbase, the regulator named several cryptocurrencies as securities:

In the first case they were Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA), Polygon (MATIC), Filecoin (FIL), Cosmos (ATOM). And Sandbox (SAND), Decentraland (MANA), Algorand (ALGO), Axie Infinity (AXS) and COTI (COTI).

The second added Chiliz (CHZ), Flow (FLOW), Internet Computer (ICP), NEAR Protocol (NEAR). And Voyager VGX (VGX), Dash (DASH) and NEXO (NEXO).

Speaking on CNBC after the Coinbase lawsuit was filed, SEC head Gary Gensler said that cryptocurrencies are essentially unnecessary at all. “We don’t need more digital currency. We already have a digital currency. It’s called the U.S. dollar. It’s called the euro or the yen. They’re all digital now,” the head of the commission said. On Bloomberg, he later advised the cryptosphere to bring its business in line with government policy. Otherwise it risks “falling apart like a house of cards.”

SEC targets seriously and will not back down

The lawsuits have just been filed, and there is no court precedent yet to say how the process will go and what decision will be made. But based on the trend, the SEC is aiming seriously and will not back down.

But respondents (Binance, Coinbase and other companies) can refer to the fact that the regulation does not contain clear criteria for classifying this or that cryptocurrency as a security. And because of that, each company decides for itself which cryptocurrencies to work with and which not.

If there is at least one positive decision in favor of the SEC. In that case, the precedent system will play against exchanges working with the same cryptocurrencies. Binance and Coinbase are not the only companies being sued, the regulator’s website shows. But these two companies are the largest in the world and work with clients from a large number of countries. And that is why there is more interest in them.

This method of regulation shows that the regulator does not want to limit itself by the law, each time solving the issue through the courts. This approach expands its opportunities in relation to specific players in the market. And which contradicts the stability of the civil turnover.

We can expect a large number of lawsuits from the SEC

The new lawsuits are almost a classic SEC claim about trading securities in the absence of registration. In the case of crypto-assets, any level of dispute will require a determination. Whether the crypto-assets traded on the site are securities in terms of U.S. law.

Moving the SEC’s claims to court might be necessary, for example, to give precedent to the recognition of a particular crypto-asset as a security. This would make it easier to prosecute other venues that trade similar crypto-assets in the future.

Our experts note that similar claims were made in April against a number of companies and citizens. Which are related to crypto exchange Bittrex, we can expect a large number of lawsuits against other major crypto exchanges as well. That said, as we can see, the SEC is not limited to U.S. jurisdictions.

Historic event

In the US, there is still no separate legislation for the cryptocurrency industry. The situation is still at the stage of trying to divide influence between the SEC and the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission). Both agencies would like to have control and influence over the cryptocurrency industry. And so both regularly issue statements along the lines of “all cryptocurrency falls under securities law” or “all cryptocurrency is a commodity”.

As a result of this confrontation, there are still no clear norms for valuation and assignment of assets to a particular class. Whereas in the European Union, a set of rules has already been developed. And even signed a set of rules for crypto-business called Markets in Crypto-Asset (MiCA).

The opposition is interesting and in some ways even historic in the development of the crypto industry. It really is a kind of fateful moment. And that will determine the vector of further development for several years. However, it will not take a week or a month for the situation to develop and the first decision on such a lawsuit will be a precedent.

Our Crypto Upvotes experts tell us how Ethereum zkSync scaling project with $458 million investment is organized. Why it is used by leading players of the cryptosphere and what conditions the developers name for launching their own token

The mass distribution of cryptocurrencies and Web3 projects is held back by the relatively slow performance of blockchains and high fees, especially during periods of heavy network load. One of the popular technical solutions to increase Ethereum blockchain throughput is the so-called ZK rollups. And the implementation of which is a key part of the Ethereum roadmap. And also about which the co-founder of the project Vitalik Buterin repeatedly spoke.

Such solutions exist on top of the main Ethereum blockchain. And they combine a set of transactions into packets, process them in their own network and then transmit them to the main network. By doing so, they increase the speed of transfer processing and significantly reduce fees. This fee is paid by users every time they interact with the blockchain. For example, when transferring coins, transactions in credit protocols. Or during an NFT purchase or any other Ethereum usage scenario.

If at the base level Ethereum processes no more than 15 transactions per second. The so-called Layer 2 (L2) solutions allow tens of thousands of transfers per second with multiples of smaller fees. There are many competing startups in the race to create the most successful Ethereum scaling solution. For example Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Scroll, StarkWare, Fuel Network and others. They have formed an entire industry. And the largest projects are valued in the billions of dollars.

zkSync project

The most famous solution involving those same ZK rollups. And of which Buterin speaks is zkSync from Matter Labs. Last November, Matter Labs closed a $200 million investment round led by major crypto venture capital funds Blockchain Capital and Dragonfly. Other investors include LightSpeed Venture Partners, Variant and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Matter Labs raised a total of $458 million, and that in itself is one of the largest venture capital investments in the history of the crypto business.

Commenting on the closing of the investment round, Matter Labs product director Steve Newcomb told Fortune. About how most of the funding will go to “building a team, further growing, scaling and developing a full-fledged company.” Newcomb founded Powerset before working at Matter Labs. Which was bought by Microsoft and later became part of the search engine Bing. Anthony Rose is also on the zkSync development team. He also led engineering teams at Ilon Musk’s SpaceX, creating software solutions for Falcon, Dragon and Starlink.

The zkSync project roadmap and its development

After reaching several roadmap milestones, the zkSync project has two networks in its current form, Lite and Era. The capabilities of zkSync Lite are limited, and it is essentially the first version of the protocol.

However, zkSync Era is a more mainstream product, opened to a wide range of users and developers in March of this year. The network was the first fully launched software environment with support for Ethereum applications. And thus beating out competitors like Starknet or Polygon. This means it will be easier for developers to migrate applications to zkSync Era. And where they can take advantage of faster transactions and lower fees.

Many of Ethereum’s biggest projects are already deploying on zkSync Era. Among them are popular decentralized finance (DeFi) services such as Uniswap, Curve, Balancer, Maker and SushiSwap. In addition, zkSync Era is used by Circle, cryptocurrency wallet creator Argent or liquid staking service Rocket Pool.

An important feature of zkSync Era is the so-called account abstraction.

And with the help of which it is possible to introduce to crypto-purses the features familiar to more mass users. For example, two-factor authentication or simple access to the wallet through login and password. As a rule, most of crypto-purses are just standard addresses. Which can send and receive funds and interact with smart contracts. With zkSync Era’s solution, developers can adapt to the needs of a wider audience.

Matter Labs representatives say in various interviews that the company is generally geared toward working with traditional businesses. They are particularly interested in the game development industry. In late May, the company hired former Activision Blizzard vice president of community engagement Michael Lee as senior vice president of development. To focus on attracting game developers to the zkSync platform. Earlier, Wemade, a leading Korean blockchain game developer, announced a partnership with Matter Labs. Which is developing the WEMIX PLAY platform. And which, according to the company’s website, has more than 20 million active users.

Launch of zkSync token and airdrop

zkSync has long been considered in the cryptocurrency community as one of the first candidates for mass airdrop . Several large blockchain projects, among them Optimism, Aptos, Blur or Arbitrum, have conducted airdrops for early and active users. And who have received rewards worth thousands of dollars. This has sparked speculation that other projects will follow suit.

Given the impressive amount of investment raised and several other circumstantial signs. And that’s why zkSync is considered one of the most obvious contenders to issue a token and conduct an airdrop. At the end of March, the zkSync ecosystem projects saw a marked increase in activity and turnover following Arbitrum’s sensational token giveaway. At the time of publication, turnover in the zkSync Era network, according to analytics service DefiLlama, exceeds $157 million and continues to grow.

The community notes that the main reason for this may be the accrual of activity. Or so called airdrop pharming. This is when users create a lot of wallets, from which they spend a certain set of actions in network projects. And in doing so, expecting to get more tokens as a reward in the future if the project decides to do an airdrop.

The zkSync developers themselves are apparently aware of what’s going on. As Matter Labs’ Anthony Rose said in a comment for DL News, project teams “should always monitor speculation around tokens and airdrops.”

The company removed the “tokenomics” section from the zkSync website, which was present there until last October. The documentation stated directly that the network’s own token was planned to be used for staking and as collateral for the network’s validators.

Our experts note that the ZkSync Era network remains largely centralized for now. And Matter Labs can arbitrarily update its software code. The company still controls the so-called sequencer and prover. These are the two main components of the network. As Matter Labs CEO Alex Gluchowski clarified, the project will only need a token when it becomes necessary to make the sequencer decentralized. He estimated that this will happen in about a year.

The Crypto Tsar would be the official who would ensure a coordinated approach. For various government agencies to regulate this sector. And this is necessary to turn the country into a cryptocurrency hub, lawmakers say

A parliamentary group in the UK has proposed the appointment of a ‘Crypto Tsar’. And to ensure a coordinated approach by various agencies to regulate the digital currency industry. Parliamentarians say this is necessary to ensure UK leadership in the cryptocurrency industry and to protect consumers.

The Crypto & Digital assets All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) has published a report containing more than 50 recommendations to government on the industry. Among them is the appointment of an official. And that will ensure a co-ordinated approach by various government departments and agencies.

The report points to the rapid growth of the cryptocurrency market. And the fact that “this sector is now with us for the long haul”. As such, the report argues that the sector needs to be regulated to protect consumers. And the implementation of the government’s vision to make the UK a global cryptohub.

“The government should consider appointing a ‘crypto tsar’ who could help coordinate the work of various agencies to ensure a consistent approach,” the APPG report says.

The positions of regulators and other government bodies in the United Kingdom on cryptocurrencies are divergent, creating uncertainty in the market.

Our experts note that at the end of October last year. And  MPs in the lower house of parliament supported recognizing cryptocurrencies as another type of financial asset rather than singling them out as a separate class.