uk

The UK's tax authority HMRC announced that starting from April 6, 2027, it will adopt a "no gain, no loss" tax treatment for cryptocurrency lending and liquidity pools, which is expected to affect approximately 700,000 people.

According to Jinshi reports, Kyiv, Ukraine was hit by a ballistic missile attack, with multiple explosions heard. The Air Force warned that more missiles are on the way.

Bitcoin Treasuries.NET posted on platform X that The Smarter Web Company has completed a $282 million capital reduction, which is an important step in advancing the issuance of the UK's first Bitcoin-backed perpetual preferred shares, which have a maximum dividend payment capacity of $178 million.

A fraud review commissioned by the UK government suggests that the Judicial College should provide training for all judges and magistrates in England and Wales to address the increasing cases involving AI fraud and the use of cryptocurrency for money laundering. The report states that the overall Fraud Act 2006 can be used to handle AI fraud, but the issue lies in the courts' lack of preparedness to hear related cases.The report recommends evaluating whether the existing "long and complex trials" course should be updated or replaced with specialized modules on fraud and related crimes, and considers mandatory training for judges who may hear complex fraud cases. The report claims that fraud could soon account for half of all crime in England and Wales, with an estimated 4.1 million cases occurring within a year by June 2025, affecting 1 in every 14 adults and 1 in every 4 businesses. The Financial Ombudsman Service estimates that currently over half of investment scams involve crypto assets.The report also mentions the case of Qian Zhimin, who operated a Ponzi scheme in China, defrauding over 128,000 victims of approximately £5 billion and laundering the proceeds into Bitcoin. This case resulted in the largest confirmed Bitcoin seizure in UK history, exceeding 61,000 BTC, and Qian Zhimin was sentenced to 11 years and 8 months in prison at Southwark Crown Court in November.

The UK plans to issue its first digital sovereign bond by early 2027, becoming the first G7 country to issue government debt on a distributed ledger.The bond will be listed on HSBC's Orion platform and included in the digital securities sandbox of the Bank of England (BoE) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to test reduced settlement times and lower costs. Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey stated that the BoE plans to make the bond eligible as market operation collateral, allowing banks to use the bond in central bank financing transactions.

According to The Block, the United States and the United Kingdom are deepening their cooperation on digital assets, releasing a joint statement from the Transatlantic Future Markets Working Group, stating that regulated stablecoins have the potential to enhance the efficiency and competitiveness of the financial system. This working group was established last year to deepen cooperation between the two countries and reduce market fragmentation.The joint statement calls for the Bank of England, the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and the US CFTC and SEC to develop a framework for the treatment of tokenized assets, and instructs the FCA and SEC to "explore options to facilitate cross-border financing." The statement also proposes support for competition and innovation in assets such as stablecoins and tokenized deposits, emphasizing standards for custody, reserve isolation, and consumer protection, and providing clear priority legal claims for stablecoin holders in the event of bankruptcy. This statement comes on the one-year anniversary of the passage of the US GENIUS Act, with Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh stating at a House Financial Services Committee hearing that "relevant rules are being introduced just ahead of the July 18 deadline."

The UK's HM Revenue and Customs has confirmed that depositing crypto assets into DeFi lending protocols and liquidity pools will no longer be considered a taxable disposal, and capital gains tax will be deferred until the investor actually economically disposes of the asset. This measure was announced on Monday and will take effect on April 6, 2027, amending the 1992 Taxation of Chargeable Gains Act. HMRC estimates that this measure will affect approximately 700,000 individuals and trustees using crypto loans and liquidity pools. Aave founder Stani Kulechov stated that this practice is "the right direction."

The UK HM Revenue and Customs has issued a policy document proposing that starting from April 6, 2027, certain crypto asset loans and liquidity pool arrangements involving individuals and trusts will be subject to a "no gain no loss" treatment, meaning that capital gains tax will be deferred until an economic disposal occurs.

According to CoinDesk, a wholesale digital market report supported by the UK Treasury lists Ripple as one of the core participants, planning to transition repurchase agreements (repo), UK government bonds (gilts), and funds from the regulatory sandbox to the real market within the next 12 months, with an expected annual increase of about £33 billion in output and £14 billion in tax revenue for the UK economy over the next decade.The report proposes a hybrid architecture that overlays a permissioned institutional network on top of a public chain, using BlackRock's tokenized money market fund BUIDL on Ethereum as an example, while also noting that the finality risk of settlements brought about by public chain restructuring remains to be resolved. The report also mentions Ripple's acquisition of Hidden Road (renamed Ripple Prime) and Santander UK's use of the Ripple blockchain for cross-border payments, suggesting that traditional finance and crypto institutions are converging.

According to CoinDesk, the UK government is accelerating the process of tokenizing financial markets, with 54 financial institutions including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, HSBC, and UBS joining the wholesale digital market working group supported by HM Treasury.The working group, supported by the City of London Corporation, will explore practical tokenization application scenarios in the UK financial market over the next year, initially focusing on tokenized repurchase agreements (tokenised repo).Chris Woolard, head of the wholesale digital market at HM Treasury, stated in the report that the tokenized financial market is a "network competition," and the UK must advance as quickly as possible, or it may miss the opportunity to participate in the construction of global digital financial infrastructure.

According to monitoring by Catcher Predict, in the predicted market event "Milwaukee Brewers vs. Pittsburgh Pirates" on Polymarket, the option "Pittsburgh Pirates" in the sub-market "Spread -2.5" experienced a sharp fluctuation in winning probability, plummeting from 44.5% an hour ago to the current 16.5% (a fluctuation of 28%). Please note the impact of related breaking news.

According to monitoring by Catcher Predict, in the predicted market event "Milwaukee Brewers vs. Pittsburgh Pirates" on Polymarket, the win probability for the "Milwaukee Brewers" option in the sub-market "Milwaukee Brewers vs. Pittsburgh Pirates" has experienced a sharp fluctuation, dropping from 46.5% an hour ago to the current 17.5% (a fluctuation of 29%). Please note the impact of related breaking news.

According to monitoring by Catcher Predict, in the predicted market event "Milwaukee Brewers vs. St. Louis Cardinals" on Polymarket, the "Milwaukee Brewers" option in the sub-market "Spread -1.5" experienced a sharp fluctuation in winning probability, dropping from 90.5% an hour ago to the current 71.5% (a fluctuation of 19%). Please note the impact of related breaking news.

According to monitoring by Catcher Predict, in the predicted market Polymarket for the event "Wimbledon WTA: Marta Kostyuk vs Linda Noskova," the "Over" option in the sub-market "Wimbledon WTA: Marta Kostyuk vs Linda Noskova First Set O/U 8.5" has experienced significant fluctuations in winning probability, dropping from 77.5% an hour ago to the current 50% (a fluctuation of 27.5%). Please note the impact of related breaking news.

According to CoinDesk, Wall Street market-making giant Citadel Securities has abandoned its U.S. trade secret lawsuit against crypto market maker Portofino Technologies and is instead seeking to recover nearly £6 million in arbitration compensation previously awarded through the UK bankruptcy process.On Wednesday, Citadel submitted documents to a U.S. court, jointly requesting the dismissal of the New York trade secret case with Portofino, stating that continuing the U.S. litigation lacked economic significance, as the judgment won in the London arbitration remains difficult to enforce.It is reported that this case lasted nearly three years, but the U.S. litigation ultimately did not make a substantive ruling on the trade secret allegations previously raised by Citadel. Citadel emphasized that the withdrawal of the lawsuit is not due to a lack of basis for its trade secret claims, but rather because the company has already achieved a victory in another London arbitration proceeding.

According to monitoring by Catcher Predict, in the predicted market Polymarket for the event "Wimbledon WTA: Marta Kostyuk vs Jasmine Paolini," the sub-market "Wimbledon WTA: Marta Kostyuk vs Jasmine Paolini First Set O/U 8.5" has seen a dramatic fluctuation in the winning probability of the "Over" option, dropping from 70.5% an hour ago to the current 50% (a fluctuation of 20.5%). Please note the impact of relevant breaking news.

Coinbase announced that it has obtained a UK investment services license (MiFID) and will provide traditional financial product trading services to UK users in the future. Institutional and professional traders will be able to trade perpetual contracts for cryptocurrencies, stocks, and commodities, while retail users will be able to trade stocks on the Coinbase platform for the first time.Coinbase stated that this license will form a regulatory framework together with its existing UK electronic money license and cryptocurrency asset registration qualifications, marking the largest expansion of product capabilities since the company entered the UK market, and will further advance its "Everything Exchange" strategy. In the future, the platform will gradually support services such as stablecoin payments, savings, lending, and tokenized real-world assets (RWA).

According to the Financial Times, the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has warned that regulation of artificial intelligence in the financial sector is facing an "arms race" and urged for new powers to regulate ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.

According to CoinDesk, the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) officially announced a regulatory framework for crypto assets this week, which has been widely regarded by the industry as an international plan emphasizing "global liquidity access," but its implementation still faces significant compliance and approval challenges.Under the new regulations, the FCA allows overseas trading platforms to serve UK users through locally authorized branches and to access global trading infrastructure, thereby avoiding the creation of a closed domestic liquidity pool. At the same time, stablecoins not issued in the UK can also circulate in the UK market, a stance that is seen as a clear distinction from the European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) regional isolation model.The "Qualified Crypto Asset Trading Platform" (QCATP) mechanism in the new regulations is viewed as a key structure connecting global exchanges with the UK market, expected to enhance price efficiency and market depth. However, industry insiders point out that the FCA has not clarified which jurisdictions are recognized as having "comparable regulatory protection," and this uncertainty may affect corporate layout decisions.In addition, rules related to decentralized finance (DeFi) are still not fully defined, and some practitioners worry that early proposals may restrict centralized platforms' access to the DeFi ecosystem, causing the UK to lag behind other jurisdictions in related innovation fields.On the compliance front, lawyers have pointed out that under the new Financial Services and Markets Act framework, the authorization process may be extremely stringent, with historical data showing that the FCA's anti-money laundering registration approval rate is less than 15%. The new system will also cover multi-dimensional regulatory requirements such as consumer responsibility, capital adequacy, operational resilience, and executive accountability, significantly raising the entry threshold.The industry believes that the framework overall provides a systemic basis for institutional funds to enter the crypto market, but whether the UK can truly become a global crypto hub will depend on the certainty of regulatory enforcement and approval efficiency in the coming months.