Crypto companies and investors in the United Kingdom have high hopes that Rishi Sunak, the new Prime Minister of the country, can turn around the fading crypto aspirations of Britain.
The new premier had been part of the government of Boris Johnson and had served as the finance minister during his tenure.
He is now facing a rather daunting to-do list and this also includes dealing with the economic havoc that his predecessor Liz Truss wreaked during her short stint as prime minister.
Optimism
This obviously means that crypto is not exactly a major priority for the new prime minister, but industry outsiders are still a tad optimistic.
A lot of crypto entrepreneurs were relieved when Sunak came on as the premier because they believe that there is finally someone sensible.
Many believe that the incompetence and arrogance of the former premier Liz Truss and the former finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng could have resulted in the UK economy crashing.
They are of the opinion that Rishi Sunak is aware of the potential of crypto and the opportunity it offers and he wants the UK to be a leader in the crypto market.
Crypto stance
A former analyst for Goldman Sachs, Sunak has on multiple occasions, shown a positive stance toward crypto.
He was in charge of the finances of Britain in Johnson’s government and had outlined a grand plan in April that was aimed at making the country a global crypto hub.
This included developing a regulatory framework that also included stablecoins and getting the official UK coin maker i.e. the Royal Mint, to introduce its own non-fungible token (NFT).
Sunak had said that he wanted to make the United Kingdom the country of choice for blockchain technology and crypto.
However, political instability has been ongoing for weeks and crypto investors and companies are left wondering about what they will do to boost the crypto space.
After all, the crypto space has also had a rather punishing couple of months as there have been a series of bankruptcies and digital asset prices have declined significantly.
The problems
Before Sunak was appointed as PM, the confidence had already been waning when it came to the position of Britain in the global crypto industry.
300 fintech founders were surveyed in Britain and only 9% believed that the country was leading in the crypto space.
Almost 20% of them believed that the regulator was hinting that the UK was not a good place to launch a crypto company.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has received a lot of criticism for being slow in issuing licenses to crypto companies.
This has prompted a number of crypto firms to set up their operations elsewhere in Europe. According to the FCA, a lot of the companies do not meet their licensing requirements and standards.
Market experts believe that this is just another example of Britain being ‘uncharacteristically disorganized’ when it comes to attracting crypto companies and products, even though its market is quite active.