stable coins
By Bruce Buterin
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What happened. The UK government rolled out tough new rules on election funding, targeting overseas money flowing…
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The historical context. The friction between political funding and crypto didn't start in London.
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Why it matters. The UK's new regulations cut in a few directions at once.
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What to watch. The volume of political donations through cryptocurrency within the UK over the next election…
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The intersection of politics and cryptocurrency finds itself navigating complex terrain once again. The
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Harborne's profile matters here. He's not a fringe figure. His ties to Tether, one of the most widely used stablecoins in global crypto markets, and his financial backing of…
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The friction between political funding and crypto didn't start in London. During the 2020 US election cycle, PACs and wealthy individual donors poured digital currency into…
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South Korea ran into its own version of this in 2022. Crypto donations got briefly banned there after scandals that put political finances under a harsh light.
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That's basically the cycle. Something happens, regulators scramble, new rules get written, and then the next innovation arrives before the ink is dry.
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The UK's new regulations cut in a few directions at once. On one hand, capping or restricting overseas crypto donations could reduce the outsized influence that wealthy…
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Related: UK Election Donation Crackdown Puts £ Caps on 3 Million Overseas Voters
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But it's not clean. Legitimate contributions could get caught in the same net. Political parties that rely on high-value donors — and Reform is clearly one of them — may struggle…
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There's also the adaptation problem. Crypto holders and political entities are probably already gaming out ways to stay compliant without giving up their leverage.
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And for global regulators watching from the outside, the UK's move sends a signal. It says: we're not going to let digital currency become a backdoor for foreign political…
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The volume of political donations through cryptocurrency within the UK over the next election cycle matters a lot. A sharp drop could mean the regulations are working.
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