Ms MaryRose McGovern:

The other element to watch is the European Union regulation on markets in crypto-assets, MiCA. Up to now, crypto assets have not been regulated. Only last month, the European Union signed off on the new regulations under MiCA. This provides for a transitional period. This will not become effective until July 2024. The Central Bank has been very clear in its messages to consumers that crypto assets are a highly volatile asset in which to invest. The landscape is definitely more complex than it used to be. There are regulated financial service providers that offer a suite of products that include regulated products and unregulated products. Our expectation is that when a customer goes to a regulated financial service provider, and if that provider decides to take the customer by the hand and bring him or her over the threshold from a regulated space into an unregulated space, that this would be very clearly documented and the risks would be recorded in order that a consumer can make an informed decision as to whether he or she wants to go down that route. It is definitely a complex environment and there are mixed messages in that space, in the sense that the Central Bank is very clear that crypto assets are very high risk. In the context of MiCA, crypto exchange platforms are now becoming regulated. I believe there may be four that are regulated by the Central Bank right now.

That provides a facility for people to take their money and move it into crypto assets which, I cannot say often enough, are highly volatile. There are risks that come with that. The future will be one where we see a lot more of that. Again, returning to our role in that, we investigate complaints against regulated financial service providers. Often, we see that someone who has lost money may have asked their bank to transfer or authorised the transfer of funds to a regulated crypto exchange and may have taken the assets from the crypto exchange and put it in another wallet somewhere else down the line again. That is probably a third entity. If something goes wrong at that point, any complaint against a bank or regulated crypto exchange platform is unlikely to be where the problem has arisen. It is an emerging world. It is full of risk and it is full of lots of crypto.