The UK Parliament has moved on a new Financial Services and Markets Bill that incorporates language aiming to provide a path to regulated crypto-assets (digital assets).
The comprehensive bill, which is 335 pages long, addresses “Digital Settlement Assets” which may, or may not be via distributed ledger technology. The legislation aims to advance a process to provide greater regulatory clarity for digital assets by empowering the Treasury to pursue regulation in partnership with the Financial Conduct Authority, the Bank of England, or the PRA, or the Payment Systems Regulator.
To quote the document:
digital settlement asset” means a digital representation of value or rights, whether or not cryptographically secured, that—
(a) can be used for the settlement of payment obligations,
(b) can be transferred, stored or traded electronically, 20
and
(c) uses technology supporting the recording or storage of data (which may include distributed ledger technology).
Entities that engage in digital assets are defined as DSA providers.
The legislation is available below.
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