The British Parliament Demands Government Crackdown On Crypto

The British parliament demands a stronger government crackdown on the crypto industry according to the latest reports that we have in our crypto news.

The members of the British Parliament and campaigners are lobbying in the UK for the government to impose a stricter stance on the crypto industry, as one MP Richard Holden noted:

“It is the Wild West, this grey area between highly leveraged financial investments on the one hand and these products which could quite easily and sensibly be considered gambling. There needs to be a clear differentiation there in order to protect people.”

Matt Zarb-Cousin who is a former aide to Jeremy Corbyn took an aim at soccer clubs especially due to the growing interest in fan tokens. Fan Tokens are essentially cryptocurrencies tied to a soccer club but they have proven to be controversial. He said:

“It is one thing for football [soccer] clubs to market gambling to fans, which could lead to people destroying their lives as a consequence, but I think it’s on another level. It’s even worse to be offering a way into cryptocurrency through the pretense of empowering them in effectively a completely unregulated area.”

This is not the first time that the crypto industry has been trashed by government representatives in the UK. Over the past 12 months, the UK has met the crypto industry with skepticism. The Financial Conduct Authority also published five concerns about the crypto industry as well as the lack of consumer protection and misleading advertising. The regulator cracked down on binance as one of the biggest and well-known exchanges in the world. In the summer of 2021, the FCA said it has huge issues with Binance’s lack of headquarters. The FCA doubled down and said the exchange was not capable of being regulated after a Binance UK entity failed to provide basic information to the regulator. Binance since said It is trying to patch things up with the FCA but there’s no evidence to suggest their efforts worked. The FCA however is not the only authority that is worried about crypto.

The Advertising Standards Authority spent the last 12 months going after Papa Johns, eToro, coinbase and other companies for their advertising strategies, as the director of complaints at the ASA, Miles Lockwood noted:

“We see this as an absolutely crucial and priority area for us. Where we do find problems, we will crack down hard and fast.”

Binance and Coinbase faced heavy regulatory scrutiny in the UK but the Arsenal FC club also came under fire after the launch of its AFC fan token. The advertising watchdog banned the FC’s token ads saying that they are misleading.