The top UK financial services watchdog is putting the screws on cryptocurrency companies and has increased the number of businesses under investigation by 74% in the past year.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has been revealed to now scrutinizing 87 companies, compared to 50 in 2018. The number includes both early-stage investigations and full-blown enforcement ones, according to the Financial Times.
While the FCA declined to comment on the FT’s story, but David Heffron, a partner at law firm Pinsent Masons said that the increased scrutiny “reflects the FCA’s increasingly hands-on and no-nonsense approach to enforcing the law in the cryptocurrency market” and added that serious cryptocurrency companies would welcome these as “they want bad actors pushed out.”
The news comes after the FCA proposed new rules this summer to address harm to retail customers over the sale of derivatives and exchange traded notes (ETNs) through cryptoassets. The reason was that some of these products would not be suitable for retail consumers who cannot reliably assess the value and risks of derivatives or ETNs that reference certain cyrptoassets.
It is not the only one to call for regulation. In May 2019, CryptoUK, the self-regulatory trade association for British cryptocurrencies, called for more regulation in the sector too.
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