Reform Chairman on Farage's Bid for UK Crypto Hub

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00:00Nigel's been very clear that we also need to modernize the British economy and lean into this country's strengths.

00:05You know, the city of London, which was once the envy of the world, is still a formidable financial center,

00:09but on a relative basis has been losing ground now for some time.

00:12We are being left behind by countries all over the world in things like AI, in things like crypto.

00:17So what this bill does is, firstly, it makes it illegal for a bank to debank you or restrict services

00:22simply for, for example, connecting a Coinbase account or legally transacting in crypto.

00:27It cuts capital gains tax down to 10% on eligible crypto assets.

00:32We'll create a sovereign Bitcoin reserve fund.

00:35So we have a Bank of England sovereign fund that is fit for the future.

00:39And we'll even allow HMRC to accept, we'll make HMRC accept tax payments in crypto.

00:45So we'll make actually paying your taxes frictionless if you choose to use cryptocurrency.

00:50Because there's a lot of infrastructure involved in all of that.

00:52Are you going to basically force the banks to spend money to make this happen?

00:56Are you going to force HMRC to spend the money to make this happen?

01:00How does that actually in reality?

01:02Because this is great, it sounds very interesting, but you're at the point now in terms of your polling numbers

01:08where you need to actually be able to justify, quantify how this is going to work and how much it's actually going to cost.

01:15So how much would it cost to do all of that?

01:16How much would it cost to change the infrastructure for the UK economy to make that work?

01:20Well, this is all going to be significantly beneficial for the UK economy.

01:24One of the things I didn't mention there, which is also really important for people watching this show,

01:29is that we're going to create a two-year regulatory sandbox for large firms, especially in the city of London,

01:34so that they can catapult themselves into a leading position.

01:37So it's not about forcing these firms.

01:38A lot of these firms want to innovate.

01:40They want to bring some of the best engineers, some of the best crypto people and analysts in the UK,

01:46but they struggle because of the regulatory regime.

01:49Some of those sandboxes already exist.

01:52But they've been done extremely half-heartedly and in an ineffectual way.

01:55And so in terms of how much things would cost, look, the reality is, if you look at some chain analysis report

02:01that suggests that actually capital gains tax takings from cryptocurrencies are currently actually pretty negligible in the UK.

02:08This is pretty hard.

02:10Partly because a lot of it is still done offshore.

02:12Number two, compliance is very low.

02:14And again, this is what we're going to be all about.

02:16We're going to reduce the tax rate and we will increase the amount of money coming into the exchequer,

02:20which, by the way, if you just look at what's just happened with Rachel Reeves' increase,

02:24it was just in the news, I think, this morning in The Telegraph.

02:27Rachel Reeves' increased capital gains in this country across the board.

02:29And what's happening, we're seeing absolute takings for the Treasury come down.

02:35So the things we're describing are not going to be a cost on a net basis for our economy and for our firms.

02:39They're going to be a big boon for our firms.

02:41And they're part of a broader economic package that Nigel will introduce when he's the prime minister

02:45that will modernize the British economy,

02:47get GDP per capita in this country growing materially again.

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