Wednesday 19 January 2022

UK: Cryptoasset promotions - Government proposals confirmed

HM Treasury has confirmed the measures it will take to bring the promotion of certain cryptoassets within the current financial services promotions regime overseen by the Financial Conduct Authority: see here (pdf). For this purpose, the following definition of cryptoasset is now proposed (subject to further consideration when the legislation is drafted): 'any cryptographically secured digital representation of value or contractual rights which is fungible and transferable'. 

The Government no longer believes that it is appropriate for the definition to specify the underlying technology: the reference to distributed ledger technology, included in the previous definition, has therefore been removed. The Government has retained the requirement for fungibility, recognising explicitly that non-fungible tokens will in consequence be excluded from its proposals. 

Update (19 January 2022): The Financial Conduct Authority has also announced, for consultation, further proposals to strengthen the framework governing the selling of high-risk investments: see here. These proposals have been informed by behavioural research in respect of which three research notes have been published: see here. These notes consider risk warnings as well as decision points in the consumer journey and self-certification process.

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