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The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has taken the equivalent of 25 years to process incoming crypto applications, according to a freedom of information request (FOI). It has also been reported that the number of crypto firms registering with the FCA has fallen by 51% in the past three years and that 186 have withdrawn their applications to the financial regulator. This has raised concerns about whether the lengthy timescales are forcing crypto asset firms to look elsewhere for a place to do business.   According to the Financial Times, the FOI submitted by the Law firm Reed Smith revealed that assessing a crypto application took the FCA an average of 459 days . The number of submitted applications dropped to 29 between May 2023 and April 2024, down from 42 and 59 in the two years prior. Only seven applications were made in the first quarter of 2024.  UK’s first crypto ATM charge claims phone shop owner laundered $400K Read more: FCA tackles ‘operational backlog’ with ...

Polkadot’s co-founder Gavin Wood is leaving his chief executive officer (CEO) role at Parity Technologies, a blockchain infrastructure company, Bloomberg reported on Oct. 21. According to the report, Wood would remain the company’s majority shareholder while also retaining his role as the chief architect . JUST IN: Polkadot $DOT founder Gavin Wood steps down as CEO. — Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) October 21, 2022 Parity co-founder Björn Wagner will take over as the CEO. Speaking on the development, Wood said, “the role of CEO has never been one which I have coveted (and this dates back long before Parity), I can act at being a CEO well enough for a short while, but it’s not where I’m going to find eternal happiness.” Wood played an active role in developing the second-largest crypto asset by market cap, Ethereum. According to available information, he served as the blockchain network’s chief technology officer. He later...

Source: Quatrox Production/ Adobe The Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro will let its crypto-holding residents use their coins to pay their property tax bills from next year. Globo reported that the city hall has published a decree in its Municipal Gazette that states that Rio will “hire companies specialized in carrying out the conversion of cryptoassets into [fiat]” to let Rio residents pay a property tax known as the IPTU (the Urban Building and Land Tax). In Brazil, IPTU payments on a piece of real estate are determined by calculating its market value. All municipalities in the nation charge their residents this tax, which generates money for state governments. Taxpayers can either pay all their IPTU obligations in one annual lump sum or pay in monthly installments. The city government explained that its deals with crypto firms would allow “the municipality to receive 100% of the value” of crypto payments in fiat, without incurring “...