Crypto Lawyer: UK Regulating Bitcoin Will Entice Big Money, Ultimately Hike Its Price

Josh O'Neill

5 December 2017

The UK Treasury’s move to regulate bitcoin will ultimately encourage institutional investment and inflate its price, a leading crypto-currency lawyer has said.

A day after is out of infancy and requires regulation now to take it onwards and upwards,” he said. “The previous benefits of this being unregulated are now far outweighed by the arguments in favour of regulation.”

Still, there are unanswered questions over if and how taxes should be levied on gains made through crypto-currency trading.

Labour MP John Mann, a member of the House of Commons Treasury select committee, has suggested the matter will be looked into in the UK next year.

“These new forms of exchange are expanding rapidly and we’ve got to make sure we don’t get left behind – that’s particularly important in terms of money laundering, terrorism or pure theft,” he told the Daily Telegraph. “It would be timely to have a proper look at what this means. It may be that we want speed up our use of these kinds of thing in this country, but that makes it all the more important that we don’t have a regulatory lag."