The U.K.'s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has announced plans to introduce a market abuse regime for crypto assets this year.
This is part of the FCA's 2024/2025 Business Plan published on March 19, where the main agenda of the financial regulator is to protect consumers, ensure market integrity, and facilitate international competitiveness.
The market abuse regulation was implemented across the EU in July 2016, covering offenses such as insider dealing, market manipulation, and suspicious transaction reporting.
The market abuse regime will apply to all persons committing market abuse on a crypto asset that is admitted to trading on a U.K. crypto asset trading venue. This includes individuals and entities based outside the U.K.
The proposed regime will require crypto exchanges to detect and disrupt market abuse behaviors, such as insider trading and market manipulation.
Also in the Business Plan, the FCA revealed that it intends to recover GBP 6.2 million ($7.9 million) of costs for the “new regulation of stablecoins and wider regime,” and GBP 200,000 for “extending the financial promotions perimeter.”
The FCA has recently intervened in illegal crypto asset promotions targeting UK consumers, cracking down on over 10,000 ads in 2023. While the FCA is currently the main crypto regulator in the UK, under the new authorization regime, crypto financial service providers would need to be registered with the FSMA or PSRs. However, companies that issue NFTs may still need to register with the FCA.