UK FCA's New Business Plan

This week, the FCA released its business plan outlining its priorities and objectives. One major issue they highlighted is the lack of regulation around cryptocurrencies, emphasizing that anyone getting involved should be ready to potentially lose everything they invest. What's our take on this? Is this a positive move?

Everyone who invests in anything should prepare to lose their money. If you read the rest of this, be sure to read it in a comedic tone. What happened when Rolls Royce jet engines started to drop in economic efficiency? A huge chunk of their value got wiped and they've been forced to relocate from Europe. £12->£1.4 in 2.5 years. Your shares might not even rise with inflation, what was £14 in a bank in the 90s can now be £0.30. Were the fca warning about that one I wonder? Most things in the UK suck with investments as you're competing with £30tr of dumb money from institutions that won't stick their hand down the sofa and work out what they lost...

As jackg says, that's the same principle and expectation you would apply to any form of investment (talking about Bitcoin/crypto as investment, anyway). It's the FCA, and like any financial watchdog in any country, they're obliged to warn citizens of the risks of investing. Note that this isn't in any way a threat against these activities, merely a disclaimer against any responsibility. What's poor of them is that they've only extended this warning to crypto, when they should really be preventing people from losing their money in scandalous stocks and options etc.

Link to the publication: https://www.fca.org.uk/publications/business-plans/2021-22 I think what FCA has said about unregulated crypto assets, is same as the opinions coming from other regulators from around the world. But unfortunately they fail to understand that a cryptocurrency decentralized in nature, can't be regulated. Exchanges and dealers can be regulated but the asset itself can't be regulated. It's true that many cryptocurrency issuers have scammed people and that's an ongoing concern. So I believe it's a step towards right direction to ensure such scammers can't operate from UK. But having a regulation and enforcing a regulation is a different story altogether.

What's new here? Almost all FCA Regulation start such warnings for a long time yet the number of people who are interested in Bitcoin is increasing. We have reached a point where it has become *impossible* for the price to return to zero and therefore the risks are lower. The problem is that even if legislation is issued to regulate Bitcoin, no one will guarantee your money, but there will be some legislation if your money is stolen or scammed and in terms of investment, you are still exposed to losing your money.