By Susie Violet Ward · Forbes · 3 October 2025
At the time of the article, the UK government held approximately 61,250 bitcoin, making it the third largest sovereign holder. Southwark Crown Court confirmed the seizure of bitcoin linked to a Chinese fraud, then worth more than £5 billion, after Zhimin Qian pleaded guilty to possessing and transferring criminal property. Officials had resisted calls to consider a national bitcoin reserve, and a question on the subject put to Economic Secretary to the Treasury Lucy Rigby went unanswered.
At the Labour Party conference the focus was on digital identity, with Visa’s Mandy Lamb asking how payments could be linked with IDs. The article compares the government’s case for digital ID as a tool of inclusion and growth with a petition against it signed by more than 2.7 million people and Big Brother Watch’s Checkpoint Britain report, which warns of exclusion and mission creep.