UK “falling behind in crypto” ahead of biggest capital event of 2022

“The UK is falling behind” lamented Peter McCormack to the CEO of BCB Bank during his visit to the London Digital Assets Summit.

“We are really behind the US here”, McCormack began during his discussion of the state of crypto adoption in Britain.

He stressed the non-federalised UK political structure was holding back the winds of regulatory change, despite the emergence of an impressive institutional interest in digital assets across London.

Oliver von Landsberg-Sadie, the CEO of BCB Bank – an emerging challenger bank targeted at cryptocurrency users – sought to explain what has been taking British banks so long to adapt to the rise of decentralised finance and cryptocurrency adoption.

The origins of change, he suggested, were to be found in numerous informal blockchain research groups – formed among analysts and bankers to advocate a way forward.

But the CEO maintained it would be five to 10 years before any meaningful outcomes would be seen in the City of London.

This puts the time-frame roughly in line with the conservative approach of the Rishi Sunak’s Treasury and the highly-anticipated ‘Britcoin‘ CBDC, which McCormack branded “misleading”.

He argued that the rapid rise of Bitcoin (BTC) capital accumulation could be tied to widespread hedging of inflation in the USD, and the BCB CEO agreed before suggesting future UK inflation hikes could drive a surge in crypto capital accumulation efforts among city banks.

2022 a key year for crypto

As with many at the summit it seems that there are big expectations for 2022 with many expecting to see a significant year of regulator decisions and capital outflows, fuelled by a potential collapse of the current bull trend  and mounting inflation driving hedging activity.

2022 will see the “biggest capital event… taking the super juicy returns, and bringing them over to the fiat world,” explained Landsberg-Sadie as he suggested that successfully-hedged capital will outflow back into TradFi asset classes as the economy recovers.

Brexit has played a fundamental role in curtailing potential opportunities in the crypto space, as financial regulators are substantially preoccupied ‘re-regulating’ the city financial environment – such as the creation of mirror licencing regimes – and have not yet addressed their fears and uncertainty around the industry.

But both men remain optimistic. The BCB CEO insisted that “it’s still early days, it’s not too late, we’re at the foot of the foot of the wholesale transition from an analogue financial system to a code-layered financial system”.

As the conversation closed, von Landsberg-Sadie urged for a focus on the macro-picture, while McCormack added “Bitcoin always looks expensive”.