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The news that Silicon Valley Bank UK customers can access their deposits and banking services as usual from today is a huge relief for the crypto and technology sectors.
We also welcome Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's reaffirmation of his commitment to financial innovation, highlighting its critical role in the UK's economic future, in the announcement of the HSBC deal and in advance of Wednesday's budget.
However, the events of the last few days have highlighted a topic which CryptoUK continues to raise with government and regulators - the desperate need for better access to banking relationships for crypto businesses.
SVB had a lot of crypto businesses and fintech customers. The purchase of SVB UK by HSBC is an indication that they are accepting crypto businesses as viable customers and arguably recognising their potential - which is more than many UK banks have been willing to do to date.
We welcome this and hope that we see an increase in the number of larger institutions willing to provide financial products,including lending and custody, to crypto businesses. This would help drive innovation, better protect consumers, and help crypto businesses de-risk by spreading funds across more providers. We are advocating for policymakers and regulators to enable this shift by providing a progressive regulatory framework.
To date many banks have been ‘protecting’ themselves from crypto exposure, by limiting or banning crypto transactions and demonstrating limited appetite for providing banking relationships and services to our sector. Given the recent turn of events crypto firms must now consider how to ‘protect’ themselves and their customers from banking exposures, and we will be looking at ways to support and educate our members on how they can de-risk their businesses in this regard.
