Crypto Currencies

Baroness Kramer Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, that work would fall to the Cryptoassets Taskforce, which was set up by the Treasury, the Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority to look at the regulation of crypto assets as well as, for example, their implications for financial stability. Day to day it is the Economic Secretary to the Treasury who takes responsibility for these areas.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, as soon as Russia invaded Ukraine, the Ukrainian Government announced that they could receive donations in bitcoin, Ether and Tether to help with their efforts, and raised over $10 million in the first 24 hours; it is a much larger sum now. So will the Government be slightly careful in what they do around closing down the crypto area? The Government of Ukraine have asked that all major DeFi—decentralised finance—exchanges are blocked to Russian-based transactions; something that is rather easy to evade. Will the Government support those exchanges in trying to put in place those blocks?