The United Kingdom government has announced its plans to recognize stablecoins as a “valid form of payment as part of wider plans to make Britain a global hub for crypto-asset technology and investment.”
The treasury believes that regulating stablecoins would ensure that they could be used safely by the public while giving the public the confidence to use digital currencies.
Stablecoins are cryptocurrency tokens pegged 1:1 with fiat, typically USD. The idea goes that for every stablecoin there is an equal bill in circulation that can be ‘redeemed’ when they decide to. With appropriate regulation, they could provide a more efficient means of payment and widen consumer choice believes Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak.
This announcement is part of a series of measures to make the U.K. a global hub for crypto-asset technology and investment, this includes the release of the ‘Royal Mint NFT‘.
The UK will proactively explore the potentially transformative benefits of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) in UK financial markets, which enables data to be synchronized and shared in a decentralized way to potentially achieve greater efficiency, transparency, and resilience.
It’s my ambition to make the UK a global hub for cryptoasset technology, and the measures we’ve outlined today will help to ensure firms can invest, innovate and scale up in this country.
Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the Exchequer
