George Osborne is right – Britain can’t afford to ignore the new cryptocurrencies – UK Times

When it comes to cryptocurrencies, Britain’s on the slow train to nowhere. That, at least, is the view of former chancellor George Osborne, and despite being a moderate crypto sceptic myself, I’m beginning to think he might have a point.

Writing in the Financial Times, Osborne tells the story of how he used Britain’s first crypto ATM, handing the “coin” he withdrew to the Treasury. All right and proper. But financially, not so smart. The Bitcoin he withdrew is now worth 200 times what it was then.

All of his successors have subsequently made the same promises he made: to put Britain at the centre of the financial revolution that was then just getting underway. But their bombastic talk of making the nation “a leader” wasn’t backed by any meaningful action. In the absence of political direction, regulators got scared, putting up restrictions designed to protect – for which read nanny – retail investors, while stymieing the wholesale market’s development.

Now phase two is upon us – stablecoins – and it looks like Britain is again going to miss the boat. Stablecoins are much more interesting to me than Bitcoin and its chums, because their value is linked to an underlying asset. Take a guess what that asset is in the vast majority of cases. If you said “the dollar”, give yourself a gold star. Or a gold stablecoin. America’s openness to this stuff – which Donald Trump put into overdrive – has put it at the head of the pack.

Warren Buffett, the legendary “Sage of Omaha” who has forgotten more about investment than most asset managers will ever learn, once said: “If you told me you own all of the Bitcoin in the world and you offered it to me for $25, I wouldn’t take it – because what would I do with it? I’d have to sell it back to you one way or another. It isn’t going to do anything.”

However, what sustains crypto is the power of the idea underpinning it during an epoch in which ideas have unusual power. Unless every holder loses faith all at once – and they won’t – it will continue to have value as a tradable commodity. Even Berkshire Hathaway has taken a sip of what Buffett likened to “rat poison squared” by investing in Nu Holdings, a Brazilian digital banking company with its own crypto platform.

In Britain, however, regulators have wrinkled their noses, grabbed our hands and dragged us off. “Rachel Reeves rightly says we’ve all become too risk-averse,” Osborne writes. “We became the world’s financial centre because we weren’t afraid of change. On crypto and stablecoins, as on too many other things, the hard truth is this: we’re being completely left behind. It’s time to catch up.”

The Treasury’s response can best be summarised as “but, but, but, we’re doing stuff”, while looking all hurt at Osborne’s criticism. But he’s right.

If you live in New York or Nebraska, you can buy an exchange-traded fund (a type of collective investment vehicle) issued by, say, BlackRock, a giant asset manager. If you live in Newcastle, you can’t. Consumer “protection” rules mean you have a 24-hour wait before being allowed to buy Bitcoin; in the US, you’re good to go. British crypto bros can still get in – but only after they and their mates run the regulatory gamut first. No wonder they take their business overseas.

Here’s the thing: crypto is going to cause a scandal. You can see it coming a mile off. It’s new(ish), it’s volatile, and the crypto kids have a habit of getting over-excited while forgetting what they were taught about Newtonian physics in school. What goes up must come down. Tick, tick, tick: boom.

The end result will be messy and people are going to lose a lot of money. They’re going to cry about it. The BBC will trot out interviewers who will look all concerned and sympathetic while the losers moan and demand that someone pay compensation.

This helps to explain why people like Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England – who won’t even countenance a digital pound – want to stay out of the water when the rest of the world is jumping into online pools of digital cash.

This means any chance of shaping this emerging market will be lost, and London will continue to decline as a financial centre in the process – becoming more and more irrelevant as time goes on. Scandals happen. They’re endemic to the City, to Wall Street and the rest. When they do, you pick yourself up, sort out the mess, try to learn the right lessons, and move on. It’s the cost of doing business.

Osborne’s views are obviously informed by his sitting on the global advisory council for Coinbase, a crypto platform. But that doesn’t make him wrong.

To the contrary. I’ve many differences with the former chancellor, but the government really does need to grasp this nettle – even if it stings a bit. It’s slightly bizarre that many of the reforms that protected consumers and brought some sanity to the banking industry after it nearly broke the world economy are being jettisoned – and yet crypto is viewed as too toxic to touch.

The former chancellor says it is “lame” to blame regulators like Bailey for the problem. He’s right about that too. Rachel Reeves is the boss and parliament is sovereign. She should get to work. There is – if she can but see it – a potential win for her here. It’s risky, to be sure. But so is getting out of bed in the morning.