Reform coming for crypto
THE announcement of closer cooperation between the US and the UK on crypto regulation and the like is to be welcomed heartily.
As you may know I have long been an advocate of clarity and homogeneity on this, and with a bit of luck this cooperation will help.
One of the things I forgot to mention about my trip to Token2049 was the number of buildings that had “Happiness” amongst other words emblazoned on them. I particularly liked “Happiness Lounge for Government Services” and another “Happiness Learning". And of course the wonderful “Happiness Clinic”, which conjures up all sorts of images from dancing girls to bottles of bubbly.
I’m not 100% sure how you learn to be happy, but I definitely know what government services need to do to make you feel happy.
I am, of course, talking about the earthquake that Reform have visited upon the UK Electoral system.
For reasons completely beyond me, the two main political parties seem to have entirely forgotten what happiness is as far as the majority of the population is concerned.
The Labour elite (and that has to be a complete misnomer nowadays), in no way represent anything other than a liberal elite that has completely misunderstood and lost touch with its roots and constituency.
You might even call them the tax-the-poor party. And the Tories? Have kept moving left when every other country has shown it to be a complete mistake.
So what makes us happy? And I’m not referring to your football team winning the league, though without a doubt that will make you happy.
No, I am talking about the broad themes of life – what we work for and strive for on a daily basis. And before you ask I am in no way endorsing Reform, but they have manged to get across some very simple messages to their supporters, and those messages relate to what people actually want.
Long gone are the days of trickle-down economics (or policies). The man on the Clapham Omnibus doesn’t want very much, but what he DOES want hasn’t been delivered by either of the parties that have been in government for the last 20 years.
And I don’t for one minute think Reform will necessarily deliver on that, but they sure as hell couldn’t do any worse.
I’ve said before the man in the street thought Boris was a bit of a buffoon, but hey, he was a bit of a laugh. Similarly, Farage (who without a doubt is nothing if not a smoking, drinking non-PC type of person) has huge attraction for many people.
Arguably he is the most successful politician we have in the UK. Interestingly, a poll just out suggests that if Boris became leader of the Tories again they would enjoy an effective 11% point jump.
The most interesting thing of course is what happens next. Will Reform be great for markets and catapult the digital world to the forefront of British Life? So far their economic policies are not much cop. Another of the themes that Token 2049 propounded was digitalisation of assets. And what could be easier? Something similar (but written on a piece of paper) has been around for hundreds of years.
There’s a feeling just now that the cryptoverse is in a bit of a pause situation. Interestingly, Ripple (for example) is using its crypto collateral to buy Tradfi assets. Michal Saylor has been doing it for ages (for good or ill). And Coinbase is slowly turning itself into a full scale massive traditional bank with a trading arm.
As someone much wiser than I once said, everything always reverts to the norm. Might that be happening with crypto?
I am delighted at the signing of the free-trade deal between India and the UK. Definitely a win all round and a triumph for economic sanity. Except there is a small fly in the ointment.
British companies who employ Indians who come to the UK will be exempt from National Insurance payments for those workers.
Even the stupidest politician must surely see that will result in UK companies NOT hiring UK resident workers but importing them from India. And because India has a much bigger population than the UK, this alone risks losing the exchequer billions upon billions in cash, and the British population hundreds of thousands if not millions of jobs – all of which unemployment benefits will have to be funded from a smaller tax base. Total insanity.
What is also interesting is that India has been on a winning streak for a couple of decades. Why? Answer: during the late 1990s they took the infamous chainsaw to the well-known Indian rules and regulations and unleashed creativity and enterprise. I won’t labour the point but that’s not something we have done.
I’m quite sure all the Indian Restaurants in the UK will be delighted with the new deal, though. After all, there are more Indian Restaurants in the UK than there are in India.
