Home The Cointelegraph Top 100 2023 Rishi Sunak

#78

Rishi Sunak

Prime minister of the United Kingdom

Look at me. I’m the crypto captain now.

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“It’s my ambition to make the U.K. a global hub for crypto-asset technology, and the measures we’ve outlined today will help to ensure firms can invest, innovate and scale up in this country.”

Biography:

Rishi Sunak, the youngest British prime minister in two centuries, is helping to put the United Kingdom on the global crypto map. Prior to his premiership, the 42-year-old held posts as the chief secretary to the Treasury and chancellor of the Exchequer, meaning Sunak is more than familiar with the British economy and the problems troubling it since the country left the European Union in 2020. He is a moderate Conservative and doesn’t run from innovation — from renewable energy and LGBTQ+ rights to the digital economy. 

Sunak’s 2022: 

Despite his busy year — Sunak publicly resigned from Boris Johnson’s government and then fought for leadership in the Conservative party — the politician’s influence on crypto regulation was decisive. He became one of the principal architects of the Financial Services and Markets Bill, a broad economic framework that included the regulation of stablecoins and brand-new legal concepts for digital assets. The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill, perhaps a lesser-known document, will also help to set the rules for the industry in the U.K. by “creating powers to more quickly and easily seize and recover crypto assets.” 

Overall, 2022 was an important year for crypto in Britain. His Majesty’s Treasury, where Sunak worked from 2019 to 2020, scaled back its requirements for gathering data from noncustodial wallets. Moreover, amid global pressure on the very concept of noncustodial wallets, the HM Treasury stated that they could be used for a variety of legitimate purposes, including as an additional layer of protection. As a part of the government’s Fintech Sector Strategy, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs included “designated crypto assets” among the transactions that qualify for the Investment Manager Exemption. That way, the “designated crypto assets” were equated to stocks and other assets under the governance of British funds, acting on behalf of non-British investors. 

Sunak is also a big believer in a central bank digital currency. After he publicly expressed interest in the concept, the Bank of England began exploring the potential for a national digital currency. By December 2022, it posted an application request for a wallet that could hold a British CBDC. And though no decision was formally announced regarding whether the U.K. would introduce a CBDC, consultations between the Bank of England and the Finance Ministry began. 

Sunak’s 2023: 

The U.K.’s visible progress in regulating crypto in 2022 is directly related to Sunak’s time as the top economic decision-maker. It will be interesting to see what impact he can bring as prime minister, but there are reasons to be optimistic. Sunak’s government has remained loyal to its pledge to drive growth and competitiveness in the country’s financial services sector. Apart from the upcoming Financial Services and Markets Bill, it’s looking into nonfungible tokens and the usage of blockchain for digitizing paper trade documents. 

It will also be vital for the prime minister and his team to have a proper dialogue with regulators, such as the Financial Conduct Authority, which has demonstrated a sometimes hardline approach to crypto in the previous years. At the end of the day, it seems that with Sunak, the politically turbulent U.K. may finally set a course toward a comprehensive, thoughtful, innovation-friendly strategy for digital assets. This is crucial, as the country no longer relies on the European Union and its legal blueprints for the industry.