When you take money out of an ATM, you check that no one is watching. When, as chancellor, I used Britain’s first bitcoin ATM, the cameras were filming. Our message was: “If crypto is happening, then we want it to happen here.” That was 11 years ago. I got two things wrong.

1. "it’s taken over a decade for crypto assets to become mainstream. Financial revolutions are slow to start but eventually overwhelming."
2. "I handed back to the Treasury the bitcoin I withdrew. Today, it’s worth over 200 times more than I paid."

obviously

These days I sit on Coinbase’s global advisory council rather than in Number 11, and what I see makes me anxious. Far from being an early adopter, we have allowed ourselves to be left behind. 

if you live in New York or Nebraska, you can buy a bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) from BlackRock. It’s their most successful ETF. But in London or Leeds, you’re banned from doing so if you’re a retail investor. This hasn’t stopped over 8mn Britons buying crypto; it just means the companies handling this wealth are overseas.

"to buy bitcoin in the UK you have to pass a test and wait for 24 hours to be onboarded. This consumer 'protection' has 'protected' Britons from the best-performing financial asset of the past decade."

the majority of UK retail banks have placed restrictions on transferring funds to cryptoasset exchanges. In short, the “on-ramps” from fiat currencies to crypto are being closed off just as the US moves to open them.  

digital transfers of money are much easier to track than physical ones. Try following a £50 note or $20 bill.