Influential UK MPs Push for Crypto Trading to be Classified as Gambling
The UK Treasury Select Committee has suggested the country regulate cryptocurrency trading as a form of gambling rather than a financial service.
On Wednesday, MPs said digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ether have "no intrinsic value and no useful social purpose," claiming that they resemble gambling more than financial services, as reported by British media outlet Sky News.
The influential panel of MPs said cryptocurrency trading and investing can be addictive like gambling.
While acknowledging that the underlying blockchain technology could benefit the wider financial services industry, they said the process of betting on the volatile price of unbacked cryptocurrencies could lead consumers to lose life-changing sums of cash.
“Effective regulation is clearly needed to protect consumers from harm, as well as to support productive innovation in the UK’s financial services industry,” the Conservative MP and Treasury committee chair, Harriett Baldwin, said.
“However, with no intrinsic value, huge price volatility and no discernible social good, consumer trading of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin more closely resembles gambling than a financial service, and should be regulated as such."
The announcement comes after the UK Treasury said earlier this year it is set to deliver "ambitious plans to robustly regulate cryptoasset activities" on a par with traditional finance.
"Under plans set out by the government today (1 February), it will seek to regulate a broad suite of cryptoasset activities, consistent with its approach to traditional finance," the UK government said at the time.
However, MPs said a better approach would be to recognize that crypto assets "more closely resembles gambling than a financial service." They
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