22nd July Update: Crypto UK Tax Working Group, Fintech Founders, license and regulation and more!

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Fintech Founders

 

Giving To Services has joined Fintech Founders! It is a network of the UK’s leading fintech entrepreneurs that provides an opportunity for real conversations and better collaboration with government, regulators and other influencers across the financial services landscape. 

Their invite-only events for the founders of successful financial technology companies and leaders at the forefront of building the fintech sector have included guest speakers from senior levels of government, 10 Downing Street, the World Economic Forum, experienced financial services investors and senior banking executives. We can’t wait to get involved further with the group and get collaborating with many of its members. 

 

Fintech Alliance

 

Leanne has joined the Fintech Alliance on behalf of GTS! They are government-backed in partnership with the department for international trade and prides itself on being a digital ecosystem to bring together the UK Fintech industry.

We will be getting involved in their meets and tapping into the community to help grow innovation within the industry and to meet like-minded individuals who have a real passion for not just technology, finance and crypto – but for what it can enable. 

 

Crypto UK Tax Working Group 

 

We have joined the Crypto UK Tax Working Group, Leanne will sit on the round table helping to form a response to the HMRC Call For Evidence: The taxation of decentralised finance involving the lending and staking of crypto assets. 

The joining of this working group puts us in a great position to be able to help inform policy alongside other experts in the crypto and tax space with the consultation response needing to be submitted collectively to HMRC at the end of August. 

Leanne looks forward to keeping you updated on how her meetings go in the following updates! 

 

Fintech Week London

 

Day 1 – The conference full of keynote speakers and panels was in full swing on day 1. Leanne had a great chat with Richard Fox from the FCA talking about all things regulation and the need for the FCA to be flexible with their regulatory approach when it comes to innovative projects like ourselves. A great day, with a load of knowledge gained. 

 

Day 2 – The day was full of more keynote talks on regulation and further panel discussions on investing in crypto assets. The team then headed over to the Paul Hastings office for a Crypto UK meet-up where we heard from Chris Daniel, the Founder and Chair of the Global Fintech & Payments Group. He spoke about the present and future of U.S. cryptocurrency regulation and how fintech is navigating an uncertain landscape of risk. It was very insightful and was interesting to see the U.S. approach and then furthermore chat to other members about their experience with U.K. regulators. 

 

Day 3 – We took a trip to an office in Shoreditch, here we built upon our new connections from the previous days. Building our network from media outlets and crypto projects to fintech experts will enable us to lean upon influential people where needed and will give us the opportunity to form strategic partnerships to grow Giving To Services. 

 

Day 4 – The team attended an XRPL meet-up where we heard from a Ripple software engineer all about XRPL. We also got the opportunity to chat with other projects that are on XRPL and we will continue our conversations outside of the meetup across LinkedIn. 

 

A great and important week for GTS that enabled us to not only learn lots, but to explore partnership opportunities for the future.  

XRPL Build

We are on track to start the ‘physical’ build next week. The mapping architecture has been done, next week we build. We have expanded our dev ops team to ensure an efficient build. More on this soon.

Threat Hunting Team

Part of the new functionality of the XRPL build is a read only API for Law Enforcement to query information from our database (upon official request). This is part of the internal threat hunting team’s toolset. The task of the team is to ensure the safety of SVS users but also contribute their skill set to the wider crypto ecosystem. Whilst the XRPL build is scheduled to start next week, the threat hunting team are already active. 

On the 20th of July the team caught a fake message being spread through direct messages on social media. A deliberate attempt to get holders to sell their tokens instantly. The team put out notices on all social channels to be aware of this message and not to listen to these type of fake message requests. Unfortunately some users did get caught out by it and sold their tokens. 

The security team is already working with the exchanges to see the activity and processes that led to this alongside our own intelligence. This type of malicious behaviour is against the law in the UK and the team will be handing over their intelligence gathering to the relevant law enforcement soon. 

Our security team exist to enhance the safety of this space both for our users and other projects. 

License and Regulation

Notorised documents are being submitted to our legal team in Lithuania to accompany the supporting evidence for the crypto license. We know from the outside looking in it may look like we are jumping from one area to another but we can’t wait for CIMA in the Caymans to deliver the legal framework to allow entities to operate there. We just don't have the luxury of time given their work backlog and no implementation date. Dubai, whilst incredibly forward thinking poses issues within the specifics of those licenses which we have spoken about previously. 

Lithuania to date has been incredibly straightforward so we are hoping that efficiency continues.

GTS Team
October 5, 2023