In brief
- The UK has no plans to launch a national digital asset reserve, according to the Economic Secretary for the Treasury.
- Emma Reynolds MP said that following the U.S. government’s lead in stockpiling Bitcoin is “not the plan for us.”
- Reynolds noted that the UK has formed a “senior official level working group” with the U.S. to discuss cooperation on digital assets.
The UK’s Economic Secretary for the Treasury has poured cold water on the idea of the country launching a national crypto reserve. Speaking at the Financial Times Digital Asset Summit in London, Emma Reynolds MP said that following the U.S. government’s lead in stockpiling Bitcoin is “not the plan for us.”
“We don’t think that’s appropriate for our market,” Reynolds said. “We understand that’s what the U.S. is going for, but that’s not the plan for us,” she added.
In other areas, the UK is looking to align with the U.S., Reynolds said, noting that, “we think it’s really important to have that collaboration and cooperation.”
She pointed to recent meetings between the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and the establishment of a “senior official level working group between the UK and the U.S.”
The “regulatory forum” will meet in June to discuss cooperation on digital assets, she said, noting that the U.S. has undergone a “big change from the previous administration” in its stance on crypto under the Trump administration.
While a UK digital asset reserve is off the cards, the country is looking at “the potential of issuing sovereign debt through using distributed ledger technologies,” Reynolds said, adding that the procurement process is underway and the government hopes to appoint a supplier “by late summer.”
Looking to the other side of the Atlantic, the UK isn’t looking to exactly duplicate the “bespoke regime” for digital assets established under the EU’s Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) legislation, she said. “We decided not to go down that particular road,” she explained, pointing out that the UK’s legislative tradition is “much less like that of the EU in that we are looking at ou
tcomes.”
The UK’s position is that digital asset regulation should take place “within the regulatory perimeter that traditional financial services firms operate,” Reynolds said. “Essentially we’re saying, ‘Same risk, same regulatory approach’.”
Reynolds conceded that some areas of crypto are beyond the ability of governments to regulate, with Bitcoin’s fully decentralized nature posing a particular challenge. “There’s only so much the government can do in that regard,” she said. “We understand that some of this stuff is a little bit amorphous, and the decentralized stuff is particularly difficult.”
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
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