Crypto fraud: an evolving legal landscape

• Recent regulatory and legal responses to the challenges provided in cryptocurrency related fraud.

There is considerable appetite to expand the regulatory perimeter beyond the, largely anti-money laundering (AML) focused, oversight which currently exists. On 24 March 2022, the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee (FPC) set out how, in their view, ‘as cryptoassets and DeFi [decentralised finance based on similar ledger-based technology to cryptocurrencies] grow and develop, enhanced regulatory and law enforcement frameworks are needed, both domestically and at a global level’.

The FPC’s report goes much further than the government’s current proposals around the promotion of cryptoassets. The Bank indicated an intention to subsume crypto technologies which perform an ‘equivalent economic function’ to those in the traditional financial sector within existing regulatory arrangements; emphasising the need to ‘ensure an equivalent regulatory outcome’. This is a significant development which, when implemented, will have far-reaching implications for consumers and crypto-focused