Briefing paper for the House of Lords roundtable, 2025 Crypto Industry Parliamentary Summit

Bitcoin Policy UK prepared this briefing paper for the House of Lords roundtable at the 2025 Crypto Industry Parliamentary Summit. It presents Bitcoin as a strategic opportunity for the UK: a decentralised, hard-capped monetary asset that is not issued by any state, which the paper says has run with 99.9% uptime over 15 years without being hacked. It also points to Bitcoin's potential in humanitarian work against authoritarian regimes and in balancing electricity grids that rely on a growing share of renewable power.

The paper's main argument is that the FCA's classification of Bitcoin as a “restricted mass market investment” treats it in the same way as high-risk speculative tokens. It says this one-size-fits-all approach imposes compliance costs that drive UK businesses and their customers to unregulated offshore platforms, increasing consumer vulnerability rather than reducing it. The paper calls for a separate regulatory category for Bitcoin, proportionate rules for Bitcoin businesses, a capital gains tax exemption for small Bitcoin transactions, and retail access to regulated Bitcoin exchange traded products, which the FCA did not allow at the time.