1st June 2025 > > The US & the UK.

tl;dr

Individual’s US pension plans can now invest in BTC. Perhaps the UK is about to abandon its long-held scepticism and start to embrace the crypto revolution. Let us hope so.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

A near 10% reduction since Friday in the total O.I. of the leveraged children always goes down well with the CCC. The spot BTC ETFs saw $950mm of outflows on Thursday and Friday, breaking a 10-day winning streak of $4.3bn of inflows. I suspect we will see a resumption of the latter trend this week.

Curious Cryptos’ meme corner – Bob, 22 years old, three weeks into trading cryptos at 40x leverage

Curious Cryptos’ meme corner – And another meme, ‘cos it’s the weekend

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – 401k plans

Putting aside the clearly partisan nature of this post, this is big news.

US 401k accounts hold $8.9 TRILLION of assets. You all know by now that my baseline assumption is that 3% - 5% of all investment pots of money will go into cryptos, mostly BTC. We can argue forever more what that baseline assumption should be. Decide your own. What we do know is that there have been some very strong indications that I am on the conservative side when it comes to that assumption. But for now, it will do.

3% - 5% of $8.9 TRILLION is roughly $250bn to $450bn of new money, mostly going into BTC. Admittedly, not today, but relatively soonish I guess. That’s about a quarter of the current market cap of BTC, so it is significant.

But the ramifications are greater still. The never-ending process of crypto adoption is encouraged and strengthened by regulatory changes such as this. I wish I could pop a Bitcoin or ten into my UK pension plan. Maybe one day, I might be allowed to do so …

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – The UK

I am going to have to be careful here, because some of our readers are very sensitive about some matters.

Let me remind you that the CCC remains fiercely apolitical at all times. It is not our fault nor responsibility that some politicians make cryptos a political matter, which should not be the case. After all, we all support the principles of freedom, liberty, privacy, and democracy, which lie at the heart of the crypto revolution.

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To date, the UK has not had any political divide on the topic of cryptos. Before the last general election, all of the parties that held seats in the UK parliament were united at one on this topic. All of them were – and remain today – anti-crypto. That’s Labour, Conservative, Lib Dems, Greens, and that sweet little protest party, the SNP. All of them, to a man, woman, and child, view cryptos with distaste.

To be fair, we have recently seen some mellowing from the current governing party, which we covered just a few days ago:

https://www.curiouscryptos.com/post/29th-may-2025-the-uk-pakistan

I suspect that the powers that be will now suddenly start to look at cryptos with a new insight, brought on by the insurgent party of the UK, namely Reform (I told you I had to be careful – if you are feeling faint at the mere mention of Farage’s name, and are likely heading off to a dinner party in Islington this evening, I heartily suggest you stop reading now).

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At the Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas, Farage made a number of commitments and comments about cryptos. Who cares? Well, the bookies have installed Farage as favourite to be the next Prime Minister of the UK. You may want to bury your head in the sand about that possibility, but to his credit, Sir Keir Starmer, taking time out from channelling his inner Enoch Powell, appears to have recognised the threat from Farage, and has been responding in kind by abandoning the pretence of fiscal restraint. And that is the key point here – Farage and Reform appear to be setting the political agenda, and so what he says about cryptos may become very important.

This is some of the stuff from his speech, admittedly to a very pro-crypto crowd:

Reform will accept donations in BTC. You can be cynical about this, but you can see the logic when Farage appeals to the crypto converts: "My message to the British public, my message particularly to young people, is help us to help you bring our country properly into the 21st century. Let's recognise that crypto, Bitcoin, digital assets, are here to stay".

Bitcoin Reserve for the UK. An explicit promise to enable and ensure that the Bank of England adds Bitcoin to its reserve asset base. Increasingly, more and more governments will do this. The earlier the better, for obvious reasons.

Making London a global trading centre for cryptos. London has long been one of the key financial centres, a position that we have been increasingly happy (for reasons I cannot fathom) to give up to others. As cryptos make their way onto territory previously dominated by TradFi, and create the associated taxes, being a core part of that transition will help the UK to remain solvent.

Reducing capital gains tax (CGT) on cryptos to 10%. Much like CBDCs, CGT should never have been invented. It is a huge deterrent to encouraging investment. It is a key impediment to improving productivity. Portugal has got it so very nearly spot-on – 10% tax on crypto transfers back to fiat (i.e. not crypto to crypto sales) and only if held for less than twelve months. After that, the rate is the most appropriate one of all – zero. This proposal from Farage is a step in the right direction.

At the next election in the UK, scheduled for 2029, cryptos will be a feature. A failure by any party to embrace cryptos between now and then will be to their detriment, vote-wise.