United Kingdom
What Towersey Festival Has Been: Reflections on the Community Event’s Final Bow After 60 Years
This year marked the end of the beloved UK festival, and a lifetime attendee reflects on its legacy. What Towersey Festival Has Been: Reflections on the Community Event’s Final Bow After 60 Years Samantha Hands
Crypto makes history in 2022: Five instances of governments embracing digital assets
The year 2022 wasn’t the best one in terms of crypto reputation among regulators and policymakers. However, even amid the market breakdown and repetitive public attacks on the industry, some of the officials found the courage to embrace the innovation. Some of the names are not new, while others showed progress significant enough to include them in this listicle. The United Arab Emirates and El Salvador continued to push their crypto agenda and the United Kingdom showed great effort to lay the regulatory foundation, while Brazil and the Central African Republic legally recognized the cryptocurrencies. Brazil 2021 might have been a year of mass adoption in Brazil, but it was 2022 when the country finally got its own regulatory framework. Before leaving his office, Jair Bolsonaro, the ...
UK Music Indie Body AIM Appoints Silvia Montello as New CEO
LONDON — Less than a year after being appointed chief executive of the Association for Electronic Music, Silvia Montello is exiting the global trade body to become CEO of AIM, the London-based Association of Independent Music. Montello takes up the new post on Jan. 31. She will succeed Paul Pacifico, who leaves AIM later this month to head up the Saudi Music Commission, where he will be responsible for developing and championing the music sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In April, the London-based Montello was appointed the first female CEO of the Association for Electronic Music (AFEM). The New York-headquartered non-profit organization, founded in 2013, represents the interests of over 250 electronic music companies across 25 countries. ...
UK Music Indie Body AIM Appoints Silvia Montello as New CEO
LONDON — Less than a year after being appointed chief executive of the Association for Electronic Music, Silvia Montello is exiting the global trade body to become CEO of AIM, the London-based Association of Independent Music. Montello takes up the new post on Jan. 31. She will succeed Paul Pacifico, who leaves AIM later this month to head up the Saudi Music Commission, where he will be responsible for developing and championing the music sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In April, the London-based Montello was appointed the first female CEO of the Association for Electronic Music (AFEM). The New York-headquartered non-profit organization, founded in 2013, represents the interests of over 250 electronic music companies across 25 countries. ...
How can UK-based businesses accept Bitcoin?
Accepting Bitcoin payments is advantageous due to lower fees than credit and debit cards, expansion of customer base and real-time bank balances. However, risks like volatility and cybercrime may undermine these benefits. Cryptocurrency payments help save excessive credit and debit card processing fees as they are decentralized and do not need intermediaries to verify the transaction. Moreover, merchants do not incur overseas currency exchange changes if payments are made in BTC or other cryptocurrencies. High transaction speed is another benefit of accepting Bitcoin payments, allowing businesses to receive payments in real-time. Moreover, with the increasing customer demand to pay in crypto, offering Bitcoin as a payment method will help acquire more shoppers. However, accepting cryptocur...
UK bank Starling bans crypto-related purchases and deposits citing high risk
Starling — a digital bank based in the United Kingdom — is the latest financial institution to ban crypto-related transfers and activities for its cardholders. Starling customers will no longer be able to purchase cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) or receive incoming transfers from crypto exchanges or merchants. The online bank announced the news in a statement to customers as well as on Twitter, citing the perceived high risks of crypto trading. Hi there We always review our position in relation to financial crime. We consider crypto activity to be high risk. We’ve taken the decision to prevent all card payments to crypto merchants and to implement further restrictions on outgoing and incoming transfers. — Starling Bank (@StarlingBank) November 22, 2022 The bank also described cryptocur...
UK lawmakers open inquiry into NFT regulation — ‘there are fears that the bubble may burst’
Members of the United Kingdom’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee have opened an inquiry to hear from the public on the potential benefits and risks of nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, and blockchain on the country’s economy. In a Nov. 4 announcement, the DCMS committee said its inquiry was related to the sudden growth of the NFT market, responding to fears the assets may be overvalued and at risk of the bubble bursting. According to the committee, NFT regulation in the U.K. is “largely non-existent,” with the DCMS planning to assess the assets ahead of a review by the treasury department. What are the risks, and benefits of NFTs and the wider blockchain? We want to consider whether NFT investors, especially vulnerable speculators, are put at risk by the market and whether there is a...
Dance Music Represents More Than 25% of U.K. Top 10 Tracks In 2022
The results are in: the U.K. loves electronic dance music. In fact, they love dance music so much that it accounts for over 25% of the country’s Top 10 tracks this year, according to a new report from record industry trade group BPI. The report concluded that the genre is second only to pop music, which can arguably be categorized as dance these days. BPI’s report suggests that 26.1% of all tracks in the U.K. Singles Top 10 this year are considered dance music. This is an 80% increase from 2021. “Britain has always excelled at dance music, so it’s gratifying that the genre’s renaissance is powered in part by homegrown talent, including breakthrough artists LF System and Eliza Rose, who have both spent multiple weeks at number o...
Stablecoins have a new name in Great Britain: Law Decoded, Oct. 24–31
The first full week under the leadership of the newly-elected Prime Minister Rishi Sunak saw a major landmark for crypto regulation in the United Kingdom. The Financial Services and Markets Bill, made public on Oct. 25, aims to enhance the U.K.’s position as a “global leader in financial services” — but what is more important is that it contains some new definitions for crypto products. The bill moves stablecoins from the category of crypto assets to digital settlement assets (DSA) — a new category marked by its potential “to develop into a widespread means of payment.” It’s yet to be seen what regulations the DSA will be subject to and if this change of status will guarantee them a green light for adoption. But, even that scope of change brings optimism. It seems we may witness unpr...
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s win was a victory for crypto
A former investment banker turned savvy politician, Rishi Sunak has had an incredibly prolific career in just a short period of time. At only 42, he has served as a member of the United Kingdom’s Parliament, chief secretary to the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer — and now, he’s starting his tenure as prime minister. As the youngest PM to take office in the U.K. in more than 200 years, Sunak has something else in common with his millennial peers: He is a crypto enthusiast. In fact, as a recent Bank of America survey found, “Younger investors are choosing to allocate significantly more of their portfolios to crypto” than their older counterparts. Additionally, those in the 21–42 age bracket are “more likely to believe crypto offers the greatest opportunities for growth” and al...
United Kingdom banks hate crypto, and that’s bad news for everyone
In 2018, the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) wrote to the heads of the country’s biggest high street banks to emphasize the importance of due diligence when dealing with crypto businesses. That seems to have led to widespread high-risk ratings and bans on crypto-related banking, impacting both crypto businesses hoping to operate in the U.K. and investors alike. Banks are, understandably and responsibly, concerned with scams, but the current situation creates uncertainty. Crypto investors need to be able to move their money around as they like, and crypto businesses need access to payment rails for a variety of other reasons, such as paying staff and suppliers. A catch-22 that harms market competition By barring crypto businesses from accessing “mainstream” banking, organ...
UK police council reports there are officers in every unit trained for crypto enforcement
The detective chief superintendent for the United Kingdom’s National Police Chiefs’ Council has said all police forces in the country have officers trained for investigations involving the enforcement and seizure of cryptocurrencies. In an Oct. 25 parliamentary debate on the U.K. Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill, Andy Gould of the NPCC said that the country’s police force had the capability to address economic crimes involving crypto, but not the capacity. He reported that the authorities had used £100 million — roughly $116 million at the time of publication — over the last four years to create “cryptocurrency tactical advisers across the whole of policing.” “There are now officers in every force and every regional organised crime unit who are trained and equipped to [invest...
