UK Finance response to the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision

UK Finance has responded to the second BCBS consultation on the prudential treatment of cryptoassets.

We supported the initiative as being an important opportunity to improve future frameworks for the prudential regulation of digital currencies and assets, including, stablecoins and wider cryptoassets as well as the principle of ‘same risk, same activity, same treatment‘. But we expressed concern about the potential for disincentivising banks’ use of distribute ledger technology to record traditional assets and the insensitivity of the 2.5% infrastructure risk add-on, which over-states the risk that some cryptoassets create. We also supported a wider scope for netting of cryptoasset exposures and questioned the proposed Group 2 exposure limit of 1% of Tier 1 capital.