Today the FCA raided eight London sites in its first ever coordinated crackdown on peer to peer crypto trading. Enforcement has now moved onto ordinary individuals operating outside the regulated system. The UK is trying to position itself as a global centre for digital assets centred around stablecoins, tokenisation and institutional adoption. At the same time, the most direct form of decentralised exchange is being pushed into a legal grey area. Individuals trading with one another can find everyday activity interpreted as unlawful once it reaches meaningful scale. There are effectively no P2P traders registered under current AML rules. This creates a tension in UK policy where: - privacy is treated as opacity - self custody is viewed as risk - decentralised systems are judged against rules designed for intermediaries. When there is no realistic route to compliance, enforcement dictates behaviour by default, not by design. These same regulatory and data collection approaches are creating real physical security risks by linking identities to holdings and turning oversight into surveillance. The implications for safety, privacy and surveillance are unprecedented. These regulators will also have to live in the world they create...

UK targets illegal crypto trading in London crackdown