UK to spend £10m on cryptocurrency research

Harriet Baldwin, Economic Secretary to the Treasury of UK, in a speech, that she delivered at the Alan Turing Institute for Data Science, has declared a £10million funding for cryptocurrency research.

Baldwin also mentioned that the country was working hard to create the right regime for cryptocurrency businesses and to attract overseas investors to the UK.

She also said that “the fact that we are committed to bringing digital currency exchanges into regulation has been welcomed by the industry, and it’s already resulted in digital currency businesses relocating to the UK.”

Further, Baldwin gave the example of Circle, which is a Bitcoin services company, that has declared its intentions of opening an office in London from where it would work on its European expansion. The economic secretary rhetorically asked “Why the UK?” and then answered that the “Circle were very clear: it was because of our positive attitude to fintech and to digital currencies.”

She said that the work was going on to ensure regulation of cryptocurrency businesses and that this fact has been warmly welcomed by the industry specialists with many businesses now relocating to the UK.

In short, the economic secretary pitched UK as one of the best destinations for cryptocurrency businesses and also said that the government has recently launched a research initiative which will bring together the Research Councils, Alan Turing Institute and Digital Catapult with industry, in order to address the research opportunities and challenges for distributed ledger technology.

Her words are like music to the ears of cryptocurrency industry as London has shown great potential to become the digital currency hotspot in recent times all thanks to the emergence of high-potential Bitcoin and blockchain startups.

It should be highlighted that UK Chancellor George Osborne is also openly supporting cryptocurrency, in order to boost UK’s productivity.

In short, we can conclude that the UK is seriously looking to conquer this field and ensure that it becomes a prime hub for digital currencies.