Overview
- The Bank of England, which announced the shift Tuesday at CityWeek, dropped plans for per‑wallet holding limits and will consider caps on the total amount each issuer can circulate.
- The scrapped proposal set £20,000 per person and £10 million per business, and the BoE’s models showed crisis lending might reach £250 billion without caps versus £112 billion with them.
- Officials and firms said wallet caps would be unworkable because issuers deal with a small set of exchanges and market makers rather than millions of retail wallets.
- Firms can apply for FCA authorisation from September 2026, with the full regime starting October 25, 2027, yet the hand‑off to tighter BoE oversight for systemic coins remains undefined.
- Industry groups welcomed the pivot as more workable but urged live, data‑based supervisory triggers instead of fixed thresholds set at launch.