Rishi Sunak – friend or foe for the crypto industry?

GB Market Commentary 24/10/2022

by Marcus Sotiriou

Rishi Sunak has been chosen to be the U.K.’s next Prime Minister after Liz Truss resigned last week and could be the catalyst the UK needs to attract crypto and blockchain-related talent.

Sunak led the U.K.’s new crypto ambitions during his time as finance minister, as he proposed the Financial Services and Markets Bill. He planned to bring stablecoins into the scope of regulators and become a recognised form of payment.

In addition, he proposed launching an official Royal Mint NFT collection in April this year, as part of his proposal to make the U.K. a crypto-friendly tech hub.

There has been a clear lack of regulatory clarity in the U.K. regarding digital assets, which has led many firms to seek licenses elsewhere, including crypto market maker B2C2, Blockchain.com and wallet firm Wirex.

Rishi Sunak could help to provide more clarity for crypto regulation in the U.K. if he follows through with his aims from earlier this year, but he could also provide some needed certainty to global markets too. Liz Truss’ leadership led to political and economic instability, as the Pound almost reached parity with the Dollar shortly after she started her role as Prime Minister. It is believed that Rishi Sunak is significantly more competent when it comes to economic matters, hence potentially leading to less fear in U.K. markets in the short term. Sunak has an extremely difficult few months ahead though, with significant economic problems for the U.K. and the Pound.

In the NFT space, Reddit has quietly emerged as a major NFT marketplace competitor. A total of 3 million wallets have now been created on the Reddit Vault, with 2.5 million created to purchase NFT avatars. Reddit’s Polygon integration is therefore a huge success and provides optimism for Meta and Instagram’s upcoming NFT integrations.