Emma Reynolds, a UK government minister, has ruled out the idea of creating a national reserve of cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin.
Decrypt quoted her saying “We don’t think that’s right for our market”.
Reynolds acknowledged that United States buys and holds Bitcoin as part of their strategy, however, even though UK is working closely with the U.S. in other areas of digital finance, the UK will not follow suit when it comes to crypto.
Reynolds noted that recent meetings between UK and U.S. financial leaders have resulted in both countries talking about crypto rules. She explained that while the UK won’t have a national crypto reserve, it is exploring new ways of using blockchain technology.
For instance, the UK government is looking to issue government bonds (debt) using distributed ledger technology and hopes to choose a company to help with this by late summer.
She reiterated that the UK will not adopt the EU’s detailed crypto law (MiCA). Instead, the UK will use its own, simpler system, and apply the same rules to crypto as it does to traditional finance.
Reynolds admitted that fully decentralized systems like Bitcoin are hard for governments to control. “There’s only so much we can do,” she said, noting that some parts of crypto are hard to define and regulate.