Amendments Seek to Ensure UK Finance Bill Unambiguous on Crypto Assets

The Financial Services and Markets Bill is the centerpiece of the U.K. government’s post-Brexit regulatory architecture for financial services.

OK, the U.K. doesn’t really have a working government at the moment, but political crises aside, the bill is still an important piece of legislation and whoever next enters Downing Street will likely have to take ownership of it one way or another.

First presented to parliament in July, the Financial Services and Markets Bill took one step closer to royal ascent today as the House of Commons published a finalized list of amendments to be voted on.

As PYMNTS reported last month, proponents of the bill have touted its “agile” approach to crypto, which the U.K. government compared to the “more legalistic approach” taken by the European Union.

See more: UK Government Eyes Crypto Opportunity With ‘Agile’ Legislation

Where crypto is concerned, the proposed amendments are largely aimed at redrafting some of the more ambiguously phrased passages to ensure that they can be indisputably applied to crypto assets.

For example, Andrew Griffith, financial secretary to the Treasury under the Truss government, has suggested the phrase “including where an asset, right or interest is, or comprises or represents, a crypto asset” be appended to some of the bill’s more generalist clauses.

Of course, some might argue that tighter definitions and more detailed explanations foreclose the kind of regulatory wiggle room that agile legislation is supposed to allow. But then again, several lines later Griffith adds that the Treasury should be able to amend the legislation so as to be able to redefine “crypto asset” as it sees fit.

With no date currently set for the Bill to be debated, and a Tory leadership race and potential general election to deal with first, the question of whether the U.K.’s most sweeping financial regulation in years will resemble action painting or pointillism will have to wait.

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