UK Releases Draft Crypto Rules Targeting Exchanges and Stablecoins

The U.K. government released consultation papers on draft legislation for the crypto industry that will provide a regulatory environment for activities such as cryptoasset trading exchanges and stablecoin issuance as well as covering market abuse, admissions and disclosures regimes.

The proposed rules build on the Financial Services and Markets Act that passed into law in 2023 and gave the Treasury power to create new rules for the crypto sector. The U.K. is lagging behind the European Union, whose industry-specific Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) legislation kicked in last year.

It‘s also following the U.S., where President Donald Trump’s administration has eased crypto regulation and the Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped lawsuits against more than a dozen crypto companies.

Finance Minister Rachel Reeves, speaking at Innovate Finance‘s Global Summit, said the new rules were about supporting the country’s economic growth objective. The legislation is planned for this year and intended to make “the U.K. a great place for digital asset companies to invest and innovate,” Reeves said.

She also said the U.K. would work with the U.S. to “support the use and responsible growth of digital assets.”

The Treasury is open to receive technical comments on these draft rules by May 25 and it intends to publish rules for the market abuse, admissions and disclosures regimes in due course, a posting on the government website said.