UK Rejects Treating Crypto Like Gambling

The UK government has rejected a suggestion to treat cryptocurrencies like gambling. The idea came from the Treasury Committee of the UK parliament. But Andrew Griffith, the financial services minister, strongly disagreed with this.

Griffith told the committee that the finance ministry does not support the idea of regulating the trading and investing of cryptocurrencies as gambling. Instead, they will treat cryptocurrencies like other financial services, according to a Reuters report.

He wrote a letter to Harriett Baldwin, the chair of the Treasury Committee, expressing his views. Griffith believes that treating cryptocurrencies as gambling will not solve the problems associated with the failure of large crypto exchanges like FTX. 

Moreover, he thinks that this approach will go against the recommendations of global organizations and it will not be able to deal with issues like insider trading and market manipulation that can occur in both crypto and traditional financial markets.

The Treasury Committee had earlier suggested treating cryptocurrencies as gambling because of the high risks and potential for fraud. Baldwin said that cryptocurrencies have "no intrinsic value, huge price volatility, and no discernible social good". 

CryptoUK, a trade association for the UK crypto industry, opposed this view. They said that these statements were false and fundamentally flawed.

Finally, it's worth noting that UK lawmakers are not alone in their opinion. Leaders from the European Central Bank and the Reserve Bank of India have also compared investing in cryptocurrencies to gambling because of their speculative nature. They believe these digital assets don't have any economic benefits.