Coinbase acquires licence to trade e-money in UK, but e-money is not crypto

Electronic money operations are now allowed for Coinbase in the United Kingdom. Coinbase is a major American cryptocurrency exchange which prefers to stay in the legal field when working both home and abroad. For example, the actual exchange trading is not allowed for users of countries where the situation with the legal status of cryptocurrency is yet unclear.

There might appear a confusion between e-money and cryptocurrency. The former is not the latter despite the fact that these terms describe very similar phenomena. E-money is the electronic equivalent for regular or fiat money, while digital currencies or cryptocurrencies are completely new payment tools invented by software developers and backed, as suspected by many conservative corporate leaders, by nothing. The leader of the U.S. CFTC suggests they are backed by mining energy consumption cost, which might be not far from the truth.

And while electronic money are not cryptocurrency, the importance of this event should not be underestimated anyway. The simple fact that the United Kingdom regulator called Financial Conduct Authority gave a permission to a digital currency-related organization is noteworthy. As witnessed by the latest news on Google, powerful organizations sometimes view the whole crypto sphere as toxic.

Image courtesy Photothek / Getty