The government has no plans for a particular crypto tsar, but I undertake to champion the sector quite rightly, in my role as the economic secretary and [as someone] responsible for financial regulation in the U.K., said Andrew Griffith, economic secretary to the U.K. Treasury, during a Tuesday debate hosted by the cross-party Crypto and Digital Assets All Parliamentary Group (APPG). The APPG had previously published a report in June asking the government to appoint an official to exclusively oversee crypto regulation.
The U.K. Treasury had proposed that crypto should be regulated as financial services, with a bill to that effect now moving through Parliament. Griffith refuted the suggestion by some lawmakers in the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee that crypto should instead be regulated like gambling.
The right regulators [are] the financial regulators with their deep expertise and understanding of issues like how to ensure markets are fair, how to protect consumers, Griffith said. He also expressed his excitement that venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) had chosen London as the site for its first office outside the U.S.