What happened
The Bank of England is set to abandon a proposed £20,000 cap on how much an individual could hold in a single systemic stablecoin, CryptoBriefing reported Wednesday. The limit was first floated in the BoE's November 2023 discussion paper alongside a £10,000 starting threshold, and it had survived as the headline number in every subsequent industry briefing. Officials in Threadneedle Street have now told stakeholders the cap will not appear in the revised consultation.
No firm date has been given for the updated paper, but people briefed on the timetable expect it before the summer recess. The move follows months of lobbying from UK Finance, the Payments Association, and the crypto trade body CryptoUK, who argued the cap was technically unworkable across self-custody wallets and would push activity offshore. The Treasury, which has been pressing for the UK to host a competitive digital-asset regime since the 2023 Edgar Mosley review, is understood to have backed the climbdown.
Why it matters
The £20,000 cap was the single most-cited reason GBP stablecoin projects stalled in 2024 and 2025. Issuers told regulators privately that a hard per-wallet limit could not be enforced without breaking the open architecture of public blockchains, and that compliant ringfencing would have left UK retail users with a worse product than EU counterparts using MiCA-authorised euro coins.
Killing the cap removes that ceiling and brings the UK regime closer in spirit to MiCA, which imposes reserve, redemption, and disclosure rules on issuers but leaves individual holdings uncapped. It's a meaningful tilt. The BoE is the most cautious major central bank on private stablecoins, and a public retreat from its flagship retail safeguard signals the political wind in London has shifted from containment to competition.