The Crypto Market Is a Gamble. Regulating It Shouldn’t Be.
UK lawmakers want to lump Bitcoin in with casinos — a move that sounds good on paper but needs a lot of work.
Crypto’s natural habitat?
Photographer: Ethan Miller/Getty Images North America“The game never ends when your whole world depends on the turn of a friendly card,” the prog-rock group Alan Parsons Project once sang. Today’s equivalent is the price of a frenemy cryptocurrency. Digital tokens offer gambling highs 24/7, as gullible punters bet big on volatile coins that enrich exchanges, ruin lives and abet crimes. The question is: Should regulators make the crapshoot connection official?
A panel of UK lawmakers has suggested regulating retail crypto trading as if it were actual gambling, rather than an extension of financial services. While gambling parallels go back to the earliest days of Bitcoin and even its forebears, last year’s market meltdown and the collapse of derivatives exchange FTX — helmed by brash traders specializing in high-stakes bets — have thrust crypto’s disconnect from any of the value drivers associated with stocks, bonds or other regulated securities to the core of the rulemaking debate.