The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published a job posting for the head of a newly created Digital Assets department.
The role involves supporting “innovation in the crypto sector” while at the same time maintaining market integrity and protecting consumers. The job ad outlines the requirements as “supervising innovative and complex business models of registered firms and dealing with unregistered cryptoasset businesses that may be involved in scams and frauds.”
A couple of weeks ago, the regulator revealed that it had opened 300 cases related to unregistered crypto-asset business during the previous six months.
It has struggled to deal with the volume of applications by cryptocurrency companies and ended up issuing temporary registrations. That list of temporary registrations is now a fraction of what it once was, with 21 firms. Companies with soon-to-expire temporary licenses include payments firm Revolut and digital asset custody startup Copper.co which just announced a partnership with State Street Digital. Other high profile crypto players include blockchain.com, SBI owned B2C2, and BCB Group.
On Friday, the regulator warned all cryptocurrency ATM operators to shut down as none have registered with the FCA.
Meanwhile, a week ago, the FCA posted another job ad for a Director of Payments & Digital Assets. They will supervise around 125 to 150 people covering payments, e-money and crypto-assets.
