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UK Unveils Comprehensive Plan to Become Global Crypto Hub With Dynamic Regulation

05/04/2022 by Idelto Editor

UK Unveils Comprehensive Plan to Become Global Crypto Hub With Dynamic Regulation

The U.K. government has unveiled a detailed plan to make the country a global crypto hub and “a hospitable place for crypto.” The plan includes establishing a dynamic regulatory framework for crypto, regulating stablecoins, and working with the Royal Mint to create a non-fungible token (NFT) to be issued by the Summer.

U.K. Wants to Be ‘the Very Best Place’ to Start and Scale Crypto Companies

The British government unveiled several initiatives Monday as part of its plan to make the U.K. “a global cryptoasset technology hub.”

They include regulating stablecoins, legislating for a “financial market infrastructure sandbox” to help firms innovate, holding a Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)-led Cryptosprint, working with the Royal Mint on a non-fungible token (NFT), and establishing an engagement group to work more closely with the crypto industry.

The British chancellor of the exchequer, Rishi Sunak, commented:

It’s my ambition to make the U.K. 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.

John Glen, the U.K.’s economic secretary to the Treasury, elaborated on the government’s crypto plan Monday at the Innovate Finance Global Summit.

“We want this country to be a global hub — the very best place in the world to start and scale crypto-companies,” he emphasized, adding:

If there is one message I want you to leave here today with, it is that the U.K. is … open for crypto businesses.

“If crypto-technologies are going to be a big part of the future, then we — the U.K. — want to be in, and in on the ground floor. In fact, if we commit now … if we act now … we can lead the way,” the economic secretary stressed.

A Detailed Plan to Lead the Crypto Space and Regulation of Stablecoins

Commenting on “a detailed plan” the British government unveiled Monday, Glen noted that “the way we regulate crypto-technologies needs to be dynamic,” elaborating:

We shouldn’t be thinking of regulation as a static, rigid thing. Instead, we should be thinking in terms of regulatory ‘code’ … like computer code … which we refine and rewrite when we need to.

He then talked about stablecoin regulation. “I can confirm that we will be legislating to bring certain stablecoins into our payments framework … creating the conditions for stablecoin issuers and service providers to operate and grow in the U.K.,” he said.

Regarding the regulation of the broader crypto market, the economic secretary clarified: “We think the market has changed sufficiently for us to look at regulating a broader set of crypto activities including trading of tokens like bitcoin … and we will consult on a world-leading regime for the rest of the crypto-market too.”

Commenting on crypto taxation, he said: “We don’t think the tax code will need major surgery to make it work more easily for crypto. But we’re going to look at and resolve specific issues like the treatment of defi [decentralized finance] loans and staking.”

Government to Work With Royal Mint on an NFT

Before concluding his speech, the economic secretary confirmed:

I am announcing today that the Chancellor has asked the Royal Mint to create a non-fungible token – an NFT … to be issued by the Summer.

Regarding what the future of crypto in the U.K. would look like, he admitted, “No one knows for sure.” Nonetheless, emphasizing that “We’re on the cusp of something important” and “We have the opportunity to shape and lead it,” the economic secretary opined:

We think that by making this country a hospitable place for crypto we can attract investment … generate swathes of new jobs … and create a wave of ground-breaking new products and services.

What do you think about the British government’s plan to be a global crypto hub? Let us know in the comments section below.

Filed Under: british, british crypto regulation, British government NFT, chancellor of the exchequer, detailed crypto plan, English, government nft, john glen, News Bitcoin, Regulation, Rishi Sunak, royal mint, uk crypto regulation, uk cryptocurrency regulation

Scotland Yard Seizes Record £114 Million in Cryptocurrency

25/06/2021 by Idelto Editor

Scotland Yard Seizes Record £114 Million in Cryptocurrency

British police have carried out U.K.’s largest crypto seizure to date. Detectives working on a money laundering case found a staggering £114 million worth of cryptocurrency in a suspect’s account. Scotland Yard vowed to continue the investigation.

UK Makes One of World’s Largest Crypto Seizures

Acting on intelligence about the transfer of criminal funds, specialist detectives confiscated £114 million (over $158 million) in crypto, Britain’s Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) announced Thursday. The agency responsible for law enforcement in the Greater London area described the operation as the biggest cryptocurrency seizure in the U.K. and one of the largest globally.

Scotland Yard Seizes Record £114 Million in Cryptocurrency

The digital assets have been captured as part of an ongoing money laundering investigation conducted by the Met’s Economic Crime Command. Police officials refrained from disclosing further details, including the type of cryptocurrency seized. “Criminals need to legitimise their money otherwise it risks being seized by law enforcement,” Detective Constable Joe Ryan commented, elaborating:

The proceeds of crime are almost always laundered to hide the origin, but by disrupting the flow of funds before they are reinvested, we can make London an incredibly difficult place for criminals to operate.

“Every single part of the Met is working to reduce violence on the streets of London as an absolute priority, this includes our financial investigators,” said Deputy Assistant Commissioner Graham McNulty. He emphasized there’s an inherent link between money and violence. “Violence is used to extort, blackmail, burgle, control and exploit. It’s used to protect criminal profits and maintain control of territories,” the commissioner explained.

Cash Remains King, Scotland Yard Admits

Police officers are not only trying to disrupt the digital transfer of illicit funds but also deprive criminals of hard cash, McNulty added. In the fiscal year 2020-2021, investigators discovered and seized over £47 million ($65 million). “This cash can no longer be reinvested in crime, it cannot be used to buy and peddle drugs and weapons, and cannot be used to entice and exploit young and vulnerable people into criminality,” the high-ranking official noted.

Scotland Yard Seizes Record £114 Million in Cryptocurrency

According to an article in the Daily Mail, Scotland Yard made its largest-ever cash seizure in May of this year, when a criminal dubbed ‘moneybags’ was caught “struggling to carry holdalls brimming with money.” More than £5 million was discovered stuffed under mattresses, in cupboards, and stacked up on the floor of a flat in West London, the publication wrote. The cash was stashed by a money-laundering gang as they “didn’t know what to do with it” during the Covid lockdown in Britain.

“Cash remains king,” Graham McNulty stressed, but he also acknowledged that the development of technology and online platforms has pushed some criminals towards more sophisticated methods of money laundering. The recently seized cryptocurrency is more than twice the amount of fiat cash confiscated by Scotland Yard in the last fiscal year, highlighting a trend of growing police seizures of crypto over the past years which started with the capture of over £1.2 million worth of bitcoin in 2019.

What are your thoughts on the latest cryptocurrency seizure in Britain? Tell us in the comments section below.

Filed Under: Bitcoin, britain, british, capture, Case, confiscate, Criminals, crypto, cryptocurrency, detectives, English, Investigation, investigators, London, Met, Metropolitan Police, Metropolitan Police Service, Money Laundering, MPS, News, News Bitcoin, Police, police officers, Scotland Yard, seize, Seizure, U.K., uk

New Report Studies Satoshi Nakamoto’s Inconsistent British and American Writing Techniques

07/01/2021 by Idelto Editor

New Report Studies Satoshi Nakamoto's Inconsistent British and American Writing Techniques

On December 31, 2020, a new report was published that studies Satoshi Nakamoto’s writing style, the creator’s use of expressions, and spelling. The new examination shows Satoshi’s spelling and American and British wording indicates it was very inconsistent and littered with misspellings as well. The research suggests the inconsistencies might have been done purposefully and were possibly part of the inventor’s operations security.

A Closer Look at Satoshi Nakamoto’s Spelling and the Inventor’s American and British English Writing Techniques

One of the most intriguing stories in the cryptocurrency space is the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, the man, woman, or group that created bitcoin. Over the last 12 years, people have dedicated lots of time toward searching for the Bitcoin inventor’s location, Satoshi’s writing patterns, and the many messages that Satoshi wrote before leaving the community. On the eve of 2021, a study published on the website ungeared.com called “The Strange Story of Satoshi Nakamoto’s Spelling Choices: Part 1,” a study that looks into the Satoshi Nakamoto mystery.

New Report Studies Satoshi Nakamoto's Inconsistent British and American Writing Techniques

The researchers at ungeared.com scrutinized Satoshi Nakamoto’s writing style, misspellings, and the use of American and British-English expressions found throughout the creator’s many messages. Ungeared.com’s study also discusses how people often talk about Satoshi’s use of British-English and how there’s been a number of stylometry investigations that produced little results. The researcher’s examination also mentions the series of controversial Satoshi videos published by the popular Youtuber “Barely Sociable.”

“We decided to subject Satoshi’s known writings (emails, posts, and the Bitcoin white paper) to a more rigorous statistical analysis,” explained the ungeared.com researchers. “In the first part of this study, we examine his spelling patterns.” The study’s author adds:

Satoshi’s spelling was inconsistent in his choices of American vs. British-English.

New Report Studies Satoshi Nakamoto's Inconsistent British and American Writing Techniques

The report stresses that the focus on spelling is a “more objective mathematical approach and is also less time-consuming.” So the researchers combed through all of Satoshi’s words and identified a number of interesting instances. “We managed to identify 108 such instances. The breakdown of these 108 occurrences is as follows: American – 52, British – 35 and Misspelled – 21,” the report notes. Ungeared.com’s report continues:

There were also several instances when Satoshi used alternate spelling norms on the same day and sometimes even within the same post or email.

The report found that from the very start Satoshi’s spelling was “inconsistent.” For example, the author notes how the Bitcoin inventor’s white paper has the British spelling “favour.” However, at the end of the paper Satoshi used the American-English term “characterized,” as opposed to writing the British spelling “characterised.”

“There is no apparent pattern to Satoshi’s spelling choices,” the author writes. “Moreover, at times, Satoshi would choose different spelling norms for the same word (or words belonging to the same stem group).”

Were Satoshi’s Inconsistencies Intentional? Or Was Nakamoto a Group of Multiple British and American Team Members?

The study summarized all the instances when Satoshi alternated between differing spelling techniques and found six other days with these instances in addition to the white paper. Ungeared.com’s study highlights the instance when Satoshi chose to use the word “optimization” and the same day he wrote “optimisation.” Additionally, the paper discusses spelling patterns consisting of both American and British during specific days of the week.

“While Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays are dominated by American spelling, Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays are split more or less evenly between the two, and finally, and on Thursdays, British English takes hold,” the author states. “Although it is not clear what conclusions can be drawn from this as this could be random too. We can also clearly see that Mondays were by far the busiest days of the week for Satoshi, followed by lazy Tuesdays.”

New Report Studies Satoshi Nakamoto's Inconsistent British and American Writing Techniques

In addition, the report looks at whether or not the writing could be Canadian and it scrutinizes Satoshi’s use of American terminology as well. The study concludes that Satoshi did not habitually use a spell-checker and the inconsistencies of the inventor’s writings could’ve been done purposefully.

“It is possible that this was part of the plan all along – to throw us off his trail with irregular spelling,” Ungeared.com’s study concludes. “Another is that the Satoshi team consisted of multiple team members who were accustomed to different versions of the English language. Or perhaps, Satoshi was multicultural, someone who has lived in different parts of the English-speaking world – or, for instance, just someone who was born in the U.K. and then has worked as a programmer for a U.S.-centric company. And finally, it is possible that one of the Englishes was part of his operational security but Satoshi was inconsistent.”

Greg Maxwell Asks r/Bitcoin Admins to Remove a Thread About the Satoshi Spelling Study

Another interesting fact about this story, is that moderators from the Reddit forum r/bitcoin decided to remove a post about the study published by ungeared.com. It seems the former Blockstream software developer, Greg Maxwell, known as “nullc” on Reddit, didn’t like the study for some reason. After some debate, Maxwell then asked the moderator dubbed “bashco” to “do something” about the post and the moderators quickly took down the Reddit post on r/bitcoin.

New Report Studies Satoshi Nakamoto's Inconsistent British and American Writing Techniques

The r/bitcoin moderators have been censoring quite some time, but this report wasn’t anti-bitcoin or pro-big block in any way, the author of the report told news.Bitcoin.com. “They just can’t tolerate any dissent,” he said.

“I think he got frustrated that he couldn’t win an intellectual debate, so he did what they do best – censor, block, and deplatform,” the researcher further told our newsdesk. The author also told news.Bitcoin.com about the next part of the series.

“In the second part of our study, we will apply the ‘Information categorization approach to literary authorship disputes’ developed by Dr. Albert Yang et al to the texts of popular Satoshi candidates to see if it can help identify the man or men who created Bitcoin,” the ungeared.com author said. “Dr. Yang managed to apply it successfully to such distinct cases as the attribution of Chinese 18th-century novels, Shakespearean plays, and the Federalist Papers.”

What do you think about the latest report on Satoshi’s writing and spelling? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

The post New Report Studies Satoshi Nakamoto’s Inconsistent British and American Writing Techniques appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Filed Under: America, American-English, Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin's Creator, Bitcoin's Inventor, british, British English, BTC, Canadian, cryptocurrency, English, Featured, group theory, multicultural, Nakamoto, News Bitcoin, Satoshi, Satoshi Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, Satoshi writing, spelling, Writing Inconsistencies

A ‘Significant Increase’: UK Regulator Says 2.6 Million Residents Have Bought Cryptocurrencies

02/07/2020 by Idelto Editor

A 'Significant Increase': UK Regulator Says 2.6 Million Residents Have Bought Cryptocurrencies

The UK’s top financial regulator has conducted a survey and found a “significant increase” in the number of crypto owners and awareness of cryptocurrencies. The regulator estimates that 2.6 million people in the country have bought cryptocurrencies, most of which were from non-UK cryptocurrency exchanges.

UK Regulator’s Crypto Survey

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which regulates the financial services industry in the U.K., published a report entitled “Cryptoasset consumer research 2020” on Tuesday. This quantitative research follows the FCA report on cryptocurrency published in March last year but involves a longer survey and a larger sample of crypto owners.

“We estimate 3.86% of the general population currently own cryptocurrencies. This amounts to approximately 1.9 million adults with the UK population (over 18) taken to be approximately 50 million,” the report authors wrote, elaborating:

The research findings highlight a statistically significant increase … in those who hold or held cryptocurrencies … from approximately 1.5 million people to 2.6 million people.

The study estimates that “5.35% of the general population hold or held cryptocurrencies,” an increase of 2.35 percentage points from 3% in the previous survey which was conducted face to face with a smaller sample.

Meanwhile, the number of people who had never heard of cryptocurrencies dropped to 27% from 58%. “This represents a statistically significant increase in the percentage of those being aware of cryptocurrencies from 42% to 73% of adults,” the report reads. The regulator also found that “75% of consumers who own cryptocurrencies hold under £1,000 [$1,250].”

UK Regulator Says 2.6 Million Residents Have Bought Crypto, a 'Significant Increase'
The FCA study shows that the most recognized cryptocurrencies are bitcoin, libra, bitcoin cash, ether, bitcoin sv, and litecoin. Source: FCA

The most recognized cryptocurrency is bitcoin, according to survey participants, followed by libra, the cryptocurrency proposed by social media giant Facebook, then bitcoin cash, ethereum, bitcoin sv, and litecoin. Among crypto owners, 77% recognized three or more cryptocurrencies, and “92% could identify the correct definition.”

As for where respondents bought their cryptocurrencies, 77% said they bought through an online exchange. 5% only used UK-based exchanges, 12% used both U.K. and non-U.K. exchanges, while 83% only used non-U.K. exchanges. The top five cryptocurrency exchanges were Coinbase (63%), Binance (15%), Kraken (10%), Bittrex (8%), and Bitfinex (7%).

The FCA’s quantitative research fieldwork took place from Dec. 13-21 when 3,085 respondents were asked whether they had heard of cryptocurrencies. 73% or 2,258 people who said yes continued to complete an online questionnaire while the rest were screened out. In addition, 493 current or previous crypto owners were shown a longer survey.

In the 2020 budget, the U.K. government announced that it plans to “consult on bringing certain cryptoassets into scope of the financial promotions regulation.” It also “intends to consult on the broader regulatory approach to cryptoassets,” including stablecoins. The full FCA report can be found here.

What do you think about the FCA survey? Let us know in the comments section below.

The post A ‘Significant Increase’: UK Regulator Says 2.6 Million Residents Have Bought Cryptocurrencies appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Filed Under: britain, british, cryptocurrency exchanges, england crypto, england cryptocurrency, English, FCA, fca crypto survey, News, News Bitcoin, UK Crypto, uk cryptocurrency

UK Regulator: 3% of Consumers Surveyed Have Bought Cryptocurrency

07/03/2019 by Idelto Editor

British Regulator: 3% of UK Consumers Surveyed Had Bought Cryptoassets

The U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published two reports on consumer attitudes and awareness to crypto assets in the country. The research includes qualitative interviews and a national survey of 2,132 British consumers.

Also Read: In the Daily: Tokenized ETFs, Chainalysis, Binance Labs in Argentina

3% of Brits Report Buying Crypto Assets

The number of consumers who reported buying cryptocurrencies in the national survey stood at just 51. From this, the FCA estimates that only 3 percent of Brits have ever bought crypto assets. Of those who reported buying crypto, around half spent under £200 ($263) and a large majority of those said they had financed the purchase with their disposable income and not with borrowed money. 50 percent reported to have spent their money on BTC, 34 percent chose ETH, and 20 percent invested in BCH, LTC and XRP.

These findings could indicate under-reporting by cryptocurrency owners, some of whom may wish to keep their investments private, but the figure seems to have alleviated the fears of the regulators. Christopher Woolard, the FCA’s Executive Director of Strategy and Competition, commented: “The results suggest that although crypto assets may not be well understood by many consumers, the vast majority don’t buy or use them currently. Whilst the research suggests some harm to individual crypto asset users, it does not suggest a large impact on wider society.”

UK Regulator: 3% of Consumers Surveyed Have Bought Cryptocurrency

27% of UK Consumers Can Define Cryptocurrency

In its summary of the research, the FCA has intimated that some cryptocurrency investors are clueless and greedy. For example, it highlights the handful of interviewees who said they made their purchases without completing any research or due diligence beforehand, despite the fact that this is true of many casual forex and stock investors who do the same.

The FCA also tries to link cryptocurrency owners to “risky behaviors” such as listening to friends, acquaintances and social media influencers over the government’s warnings. Moreover, it notes that “many told the qualitative researchers that they were distrustful of mainstream media or official sources of information.”

Additionally, it highlights that 73 percent of those surveyed said they didn’t know what cryptocurrency is or were unable to exactly define the term. The term was most recognized by middle class and upper middle class men aged 20-44 years old.

UK Regulator: 3% of Consumers Surveyed Have Bought Cryptocurrency

What do you think about the findings of the FCA’s research? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.


Images courtesy of Shutterstock, FCA.


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The post UK Regulator: 3% of Consumers Surveyed Have Bought Cryptocurrency appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Filed Under: british, cryptoassets, Economics, English, FCA, Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), N-Featured, News Bitcoin, Survey, uk

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