Incoming chair of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) Ashley Alder has said the cryptocurrency space gives "rise to massively untoward risk" in a blow to the future of digital assets regulation in the UK.
At the start of January 2023, Alder will begin a five-year term as the new chair of theFCA.
Yesterday Alder, the current CEO of the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) in Hong Kong, gave his first indication of one of the most contentious issues for his brief. Crypto.
Alder told MPs in a cross-party Treasury select committee meeting yesterday, designed to confirm his appointment, that he believed crypto firms are widely used to launder money.
“I think [crypto] should be regulated further,” said Alder to the committee, according to the Financial Times.
“Our experience to date of [crypto] platforms, whether FTX or others, is that they are deliberately evasive, they are a method by which money laundering happens in size,” Alder added.
He specified his concerns further that crypto platforms “bundle a whole set of activities which are normally segregated” and that this then “gives rise to massively untoward risk”.
Alder’s appointment as theFCA’snew chair has raised eyebrowsgiven his career focus in Hong Kong and that he did not attend the committee meeting in person.
This article was originally published on AltFi
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