The British Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the UK’s top financial regulator, has recently cracked down on the crypto industry. According to the FCA, many crypto platforms, including exchangesto make money laundering a lot easier for criminals.
FCA does not like crypto
Regulators around the world are watching the demise of ftx already with suspicion towards the crypto industry. The FTX drama has once again made it clear that there is still a lot to be done in terms of regulation.
Regulators hope sooner or later to end the ‘Wild West’ nature of the industry and the allegations against the crypto world are getting fiercer. The latest example of this comes from the United Kingdom.
The president of the FCA, Ashley Adler, informed politicians in the country yesterday that crypto platforms are widely used for criminal purposes such as money laundering, that reports the Financial Times. In addition, many of these platforms would deliberately try to stay out of the reach of regulators.
Adler also said that crypto companies that want to establish themselves in the country will have to work quite hard for this.
“Our experience so far with crypto platforms, be it FTX or others, is that they are deliberately evasive, they are a method of money laundering in scale.”
Risks of crypto
According to Adler, there is also a disproportionate amount of risk associated with the crypto industry. According to him, this is because crypto combines many different financial disciplines, sometimes even on a single platform. Normally many of these activities are separate, but in the crypto industry everything comes together. That, according to Adler, is dangerous.
The fact that the FCA is not particularly fond of crypto is also evident from the fact that most companies that apply for a license are rejected by the regulator. As many as 80% of all these companies are unable to obtain a license from the FCA.