FCA President: Stricter Regulations On Promoting Crypto

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Charles Randell, head of the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), said the country’s regulators should have more power to protect consumers from shady cryptocurrency investments promoted online.

Randell, according to a Financial Times (FT) report, said it would take time to completely create a new rulebook for businesses, saying it would take “a lot of thought.”

However, in the meantime, he said there should be more actions to end risky or spurious opportunities.

This includes some of the social media influencers who promote ‘pump and dump’ programs for new coins. In his remarks, Randall said there need to be more rules specifically against influencers and paid online advertising, which have the potential to be used to mislead customers. In his view, big social media and tech companies like Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and TikTok need to do more to curb the spread of disinformation.

Randall’s comments come as the UK Treasury considers a proposal to give the FCA a bigger role in promoting crypto assets. There would be stricter standards under this proposal, which are currently applied to the marketing of traditional financial products.

Cryptocurrency-related scams have seen a huge proliferation in recent years, with China alone reporting billions of illicit activity.

Chinese crypto addresses sent and received funds for illegal activity from April 2019 to June 2021 for a total of $ 2.2 billion.

Read more: Chinese cryptocurrency linked to over $ 2 billion in crimes and scams

However, crypto scams have become common, with UK police seizing $ 249 million worth of crypto in July, which was linked to a money laundering operation, believed to have been the largest in the country’s history. And scams and other similar crypto-related crimes totaled $ 4.3 billion in 2019. That number was higher than the previous two years combined.

The China report said the reason for the massive increase in crypto scams was the rise in fentanyl trafficking as well as money laundering.

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NEW PYMNTS DATA: 58% OF MULTINATIONAL COMPANIES USE CRYPTO-CURRENCY

By the way: Despite price volatility and regulatory uncertainty, a new study from PYMNTS shows that 58% of multinational companies are already using at least one form of cryptocurrency, especially when transferring funds across borders. The new Cryptocurrency, Blockchain and Global Business survey, a PYMNTS and Circle collaboration, probing 500 executives about the potential and pitfalls that crypto faces as it becomes part of the mainstream financial sector.

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