PayPal halts UK cryptocurrency sales by 2024: details
Payments giant PayPal will no longer allow UK customers to buy cryptocurrencies through its platform from October as it works to comply with new crypto promotions rules.
The UK’s financial regulator is expected to introduce tougher rules to limit the promotion of cryptocurrencies to UK consumers, including requiring cryptocurrency firms to post risk warnings and removing refer-a-friend bonuses.
PayPal will “temporarily pause” the ability for customers to buy cryptocurrencies on its platform starting Oct. 1 to comply with new regulations that go into effect Oct. 8, an email to customers said on Tuesday. It was said that a restart was expected “early 2024”.
“PayPal consistently works closely with regulators around the world to comply with applicable rules and regulations in the markets in which we operate,” the company told customers in the email, of which the company provides a copy Reuters passed on.
It said customers could hold and sell their cryptocurrencies “at any time.”
The news was previously reported by crypto media outlets like CoinJournal.
PayPal first introduced the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies in the UK in 2021.
Regulators around the world are increasingly trying to regulate crypto assets after the collapse of several crypto firms, including FTX, caused huge losses for amateur investors last year.
After token prices plummeted last year, the price of top cryptocurrency Bitcoin has gradually recovered and is up around 76 percent so far this year. Still, its price is less than half of the all-time high reached in November 2021.
Earlier this month, PayPal shares received a boost when the company announced that it had launched a U.S. dollar stablecoin — a type of cryptocurrency designed to maintain a constant price by being pegged to a stable asset.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
(This story was not edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
