UK’s disingenuous crypto U-turn. Who is pulling who’s strings?

Just who is behind this sudden crypto push by all and sundry, and why did the FCA make a massive U-turn? We go into detail

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) recently, and quite rightly, banned cryptocurrency trading across all areas of the financial markets business in the United Kingdom very recently.

This was a very long overdue but pragmatic and sensible move by the FCA.

Ten years is a very long time, and certainly long enough for the general public to understand that a non-existent currency traded on a non-existent exchange is the equivalent to snake oil, only with massive self-imposed volatility and leverage, making the inevitable losses more significant than simple, old fashioned snake oil.

It took a very long time. Long enough for some retail brokers to get themselves involved in trading cryptocurrency CFDs which in some cases cost them tens of millions of dollars in a short time. FinanceFeeds is privy to inside information that showed losses at two firms of $17 million and $40 million respectively within one week at the end of 2017, one of which was a publicly listed entity which hid this unfortunate scenario by reporting the entire year in one quarter, presumably to avoid shareholder furore.

Then came all the ICO fraud, and inability to withdraw from various ‘exchanges’ that the proponents who all came out of nowhere with no industry expertise and were uttering the word ‘crypto’ at every opportunity with almost foaming-at-the-mouth obsession, all of which are now either under sanctions, in jail or on the run.

Surely by now, with the penny finally dropping at the FCA, the world would finally begin to understand that any digital currency is a fraud.

There is to be no technology revolution, no bitcoin-fueled empowerment of the masses and no removal of the properly established banks and non-bank trading entities in the name of non-existent, unbacked garbage peddled under the false premise of distributed blockchain ‘fintech’.

It has been as clear as day that cryptocurrency thus far has been the preserve of mavericks, crooks and anarchists, as well as nefarious scammers who can simply run away with real money and replace it with their own worthless non-existent ‘coins’ with no recourse.

Why, in that case, has the FCA taken an absolute turn on this and begun to issue what it is being described by pro-crypto bodies today as a ‘Temporary Registration Regime’ for those firms which applied for FCA registration before 16th December 2020 and whose application is still in process. This is both a relief and reason for optimism for our members and all participants in the UK’s growing crypto industry.

This, if it is true, is an absolute U-turn on formal government policy, and comes at a time during which we are witnessing Tier 1 banks, world governments and large, long-established exchanges jumping on the crypto bandwagon.

Suddenly, after 10 years of fraud and misbehavior from back street individuals and crooks, the Tier 1 banks, professional services companies and derivatives venues are going all out for crypto. Even market data firms and interdealer brokers are going down this route, and now we have a complete capitulation by the regulatory authority which is responsible for overseeing financial markets activity in the world’s most important financial center – London.

The key features of the Temporary Registration Regime are:

  • Existing business who have applied before 10th Jan 2021 can continue to trade until 9th July 2021 – click here to view the list of such companies provided by the FCA.
  • New business who are not trading and have not applied by 16th December 2020 should wait until after 10th January 2021to apply.
  • Firms that have not submitted by 16th December 2020 will not be eligible for the Temporary Registration Regime and will need to return cryptoassets to clients and cease trading on the 10th Jan 2021.
  • The FCA was not able to register all applicants (no numbers given) due to the complexity and standard of applications received and the pandemic restricting the FCA’s ability to visit firms as planned.

Self-appointed body CryptoUK, whoever they are, has been quick to laud this move, by saying “We would like to take this opportunity to thank the many members that provided us with compelling and fact-based accounts of their registration application experiences. These testimonies provided invaluable evidence for our conversations with the FCA and HMT.

“Thanks also to the teams at FCA and HMT who made time to discuss our feedback and concerns regarding the process, we look forward to continuing these conversations.”

What is driving this move toward cryptocurrency by the lemmings of Wall Street and Canary Wharf?

It certainly won’t be the pro-crypto bodies bellyaching about the rules against cryprocurrency as they have no teeth and no standing.

Perhaps the catalyst was September’s unleashing of what could well turn out to be a currency dictatorship by China’s government, a huge totalitarian power that has already got its prey (Europe and America) wearing masks and being subjugated by Chinese-influenced governments in order to turn the formerly democratic west into satellites of the Chinese communist party.

It was inevitable that the communist government would take that stance. Chinese FX trading was massively popular and people from Shanghai to Shenzhen flocked toward the free market opportunities of global electronic brokerages, often doing tens of thousands of lots per month as this was their only outlet from government controlled bucket shops masquerading as regional exchanges, which not only stole their money but had no access to asset classes outside Chinese stocks – also controlled by the state.

Chinese communism is a clever form of dictatorial government.

It is the type which makes people believe they are getting the best deal ever, when in reality the opposite is true.

To keep people malleable, they allow state investment into startups, which really means the government is your boss, they allow people to drive luxury cars with the same brand names as Western ones – although theyre all made under license in China – and they allow rampant consumerism, making it look to the untrained eye that China’s population live a capitalist lifestyle.

Nothing could be further from the reality.

Thus, to be able to instil further control over a highly educated and astute, well dressed population that are now used to luxuries, the communist party needs to ‘sell’ ideas that appear innovative and cool when they are trying to curtail liberties.

This week’s roll out of such a thing comes in the form of a government backed digital currency.

It is the first in the world of its type. No other nation has launched a sovereign digital currency.

Wow, how avantgarde, I hear you say…

Perhaps even more unbelievably, it is the People’s Bank of China, the company’s central bank that is unleashing it onto the ‘market’,

The People’s Bank of China intends to overtake other countries and be the first to issue its digital currency (CBDC) reported Reuters with reference to the Central Bank comment.

And there you have the mainstream media totally misunderstanding this and considering it to be ‘overtaking other countries’ when reality it is another draconian effort to control the spending habits and investment opportunities of the population.

According to the central bank, the right to issue digital assets will become a “new battlefield” between states. Winning the race will allow China to strengthen the yuan’s position on the world stage and break the dollar’s dominance.

“China has many advantages and opportunities in issuing fiat digital currencies, so it should accelerate the pace to seize the first track,” the bank said in a statement.

China also needs to establish a new payment system network to break the dollar monopoly as a key part of the yuan internationalization, the article said.

This demonstrates another artform that the communists have always been very good at – propaganda.

If a country can remove all Fiat money, replace it with a digital currency, then turn it on and off according to your behavior, they’ve got you by your little toe.

In Western countries, viewpoints such as Bill Gates developing a chip to implant into the human population which tracks everything we do and then allows governments to outlaw fiat currency, replace it with digital currency and then switch you on and off so that you starve if you do not comply with dictatorial rules has more often than not been written off as fringe opinion, so why when China does exactly this is it considered a step toward modernity?

A nation whose ‘technology’ industry is either not allowed to export its products or import components, or steals software code and databases from Western customers is neither modern nor avantgarde.

We have all seen the fake Microsoft Windows operating systems running unlicensed MetaTrader terminals in IB offices across the country. We have all seen the pillaging of client databases by Chinese partners, but what we have not seen is any form of innovation.

Instead, Chinese consumers and B2B clients are absolutely thirsty for the opportunity to buy Western products or trade western markets, this being a final government attempt to curtail these attempts.

Brokerages looking to make a fast return could potentially get in early, and have this traded against Western stocks or equities for example, however when a communist government and its own central bank puts a digital currency in place, the world should run a mile from it.

Governments do not enter into things like this for your benefit. They do it to gain greater control and increase tyranny.

Suddenly, as soon as the Chinese government unleashed its plans for digital currency, the European Central Bank did exactly the same, and now we have every Western consultancy, bank, exchange and tech firm jumping to embrace cryptocurrency when this time last year they would have written it off for what it is – a fraud.

Contrary to the naïve ramblings of the tabloid press, most of which has interests in Chinese government owned entities, the launch of a digital currency would mean that for the majority of the general public of the free world, an even greater curtailment on financial freedom than has already been foist upon the world may loom at the hands of Chinese communism.

Two months ago, this elephant in the trading room expanded to Europe, as left-leaning European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde has issued a  report on the possible issuance of a digital euro. In early October in Frankfurt, Ms Lagarde said the euro should be “fit for the digital age”.

Attempts to eradicate sovereign currencies and digitalize them have fallen into two camps over recent years. The first being maverick troublemakers with their preposterous Bitcoin (and many other equally worthless non entities) frauds which have seen non-existent virtual currencies be traded on non-existent virtual exchanges and then for the owner or originator to make for the hills with no recourse.

A trail of destruction has followed gullible ‘investors’ who had become so obsessed with the aura surrounding these schemes that a few years ago, you could not walk outside your front door without a former junior member of staff at a third rate FX white label foaming at the mouth and saying the word bitcoin several times per sentence.

Here we are, a few years later, and those prophets of the future who railed against the traditional banking system and heralded their own self-created non existent ‘currencies’ as the future are either bankrupt or in jail, with a long line of extorted clients lining up at the receivers offices.

The second camp is the Bill Gates and socialist government collaboration, which has caused many sceptics to be labeled ‘conspiracy theorists’ recently, especially those, many of which are qualified economists and financial services industry executives who see the will to ditch fiat currency as a means of tagging and controlling people globally. You disobey the faceless computer, and they switch you off and you starve.

Capital controls, monitoring and other such Orwellian procedures are far more possible at government level with digital currency being the method of legal tender.

Thus, the European Union, which has been under tremendous pressure from the Chinese communist party over recent months to adhere to draconian lockdowns and hand over the entire infrastructure to the Chinese government for $1 when the world goes bankrupt, hence this complicity.

Ms Lagarde spoke to the tabloid press saying “Europeans are increasingly turning to digital in the ways they spend, save and invest. We should be prepared to issue a digital euro.”

Yes, many parts of Europe are highly advanced in terms of how point of sale transactions are conducted. France is one of the leaders in this, as absolutely everything is contactless, however the French public are not tolerant of attempts to lock them down or control their lifestyles, and quite right too. Italy allowed it, and it destroyed their already weak economy.

Germany is up to its eyes in debt, has a corrupt and bankrupt Tier 1 bank (Deutsche Bank) which is creaking and crumbling, has tremendous debt owed to it by the non-producing ‘siesta countries’, and has an old fashioned, low-tech manufacturing sector which cannot modernize.

A digital Euro would create government control outside the EU Parliament and dangle the European Central Bank’s capabilities from a precipice.

It was stated this morning in a clear piece of propaganda that Ms Lagarde identified a number of scenarios that would require the issuance of a digital currency, such as an increased demand for electronic payments in the euro area a continuing decline in the use of cash.

Moreover, said the pro-digital pundits, as other central banks around the world have started to issue digital currencies, Lagarde stressed the time may be right for the EU to follow suit.

Have you ever heard such rot?

Speaking alongside the ECB president, Fabio Panetta, member of ECB’s executive board, said a digital euro would further support Europe’s drive towards innovation and further establish the euro’s role globally. Yes, straight into the hands of the capital controlling APAC based left.

“It would contribute to its financial sovereignty and strengthen the international role of the euro”, Mr Panetta said. Wonder who is lining his pockets.

One of the ECB’s main objections to a digital version of the euro is the risk it may displace traditional deposits, thereby hollowing out commercial banks and crowding out private solutions. This is quite sensible, however what they really should think is that it will not crowd private solutions but decimate them totally.

The ECB said in its report that deposits in digital euros would probably be capped and subject, at least in part, to the ECB’s interest rate on deposits, which currently stands at -0.5%.

As far as trading the Euro is concerned, thank goodness it will never become a default reference currency. That battle will always be between the US Dollar and the British pound.

Given the current influence on decimating the US economy that the Chinese government has had recently, in owning the entire supply chain of major US corporations which have been able to lobby the senate committee into locking down the country and forcing over 40 million citizens out of work, and when President Trump states that there should be no lockdown, the Senate overrules him because he is controlled by the Senate, which is ultimately controlled by China, this could mean that the British Pound will regain its long lost place as default currency globally.

Initially Britain did not capitulate to the fraudulent lockdown bullying from megalomaniac China, and two months afgo actually considered canning a years-long nuclear energy plant construction project led by a major Chinese government owned construction company and sending them packing, saying that the UK does not want to be ordered around by China, and that the UK can produce is own renewable energy sources which will free us up from Chinese totalitarian government bullying.

Now we have a total U-turn by the regulator, and British firms all gearing up to go crypto, and guess what? Another lockdown.

Go figure…..

 

Read this next

Digital Assets

BlockDAG’s Presale Achieves $9.9M: Aiming For A 5000-Fold ROI As Cardano’s Price Rises And Fantom Launches Sonic

Explore Cardano’s surge, Sonic’s efficiency, and why BlockDAG’s growth makes it the top crypto choice. A deep dive into the future of blockchain investments.

Digital Assets

US, UK probe $20 billion Tether transfers tied to Russian exchange.

U.S. and UK authorities are investigating the movement of $20 billion in the USD-pegged stablecoin tether (USDT) through Moscow-based exchange Garantex.

Digital Assets

BlockDAG Presale Raises $9.9M as Batch 5 Nears Sell-Out Amid Bonk’s Fluctuating Trading Volume & Spell’s Bullish Price

Explore BONK’s trading volume, SPELL’s market shifts, and why BlockDAG’s 10,000 ROI makes it an ideal crypto for savvy investors in 2024.

Digital Assets

Bybit expands into Europe amid regulatory scrutiny

Dubai-based cryptocurrency exchange Bybit is expanding its operations in Europe after encountering regulatory challenges in Hong Kong.

Digital Assets

Cathie Wood’s sponsored Bitcoin ETF sees historic $200 million inflows

The ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB), co-sponsored by Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest, registered historic inflows exceeding $200 million on Wednesday, signaling a robust appetite among investors for Bitcoin-centric investments.

Digital Assets

Sam Bankman-Fried might see his 25-year sentence halved

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison by a Manhattan court on Thursday. This comes after he was convicted of defrauding customers and investors, with Judge Lewis Kaplan highlighting the potential future risks posed by Bankman-Fried.

Technical Analysis

EURJPY Technical Analysis Report 28 March, 2024

EURJPY currency pair under the bearish pressure after the pair reversed down from the major resistance level 164.25, which also stopped the sharp weekly uptrend at the end of last year,

Digital Assets

BlockDAG’s Presale Hits $9.9M, MultiversX & MINA Price Predictions Show Green

Read about BlockDAG’s promising $10 prediction and insights on MultiversX Price Prediction as MINA’s potential unfolds.

Digital Assets

Rockstar Co-Founder and All-star Line Up Join Advisory Board to Take Metacade into Post Beta Orbit

Metacade, the revolutionary Web3 gaming platform, prepares to streak out of beta with a slew of ground-breaking initiatives that will redefine the way blockchain games are developed.

<