Michael Gove and Rishi Sunak have pledged to see off Conservative rebellions over housebuilding as they lay out their plans to increase homes in the UK.
Mr Gove, the housing secretary, was delivering a speech on his plans to increase the number of homes being built in the UK, with the government having previously missed its target to put up 300,000 annually.
Among the proposals are plans to ease the development of shops and takeaways into domestic properties, and a focus on developing brownfield sites – with Cambridge being singled out as an area where a “super squad” of planners will work on major housing developments.
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Housing Secretary Michael Gove laid out his latest plans for housebuilding
Even before Mr Gove’s speech started, backbench Conservative MPs voiced their concerns over the plans.
Anthony Browne, the Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire, said: “I will do everything I can to stop the government’s nonsense plans to impose mass housebuilding on Cambridge, where all major developments are now blocked by the Environment Agency because we have quite literally run out of water.
“Our streams, rivers and ponds already run dry.”
Asked about the comments, Mr Gove remained determined in his goal: “It will be the case that I’m sure that Conservative backbenchers and others once they have a chance to look at our plans will realise that this is in the national interest and that’s why we’re acting.”
The prime minister, asked about the comments from Mr Browne, said: “No one is doing mass house building in Cambridge, this is about adding a new urban quarter to Cambridge, which is something that local communities have spoken about.
“And of course that will be done in dialogue with local communities.
Read more:
Gove waters down house building target after Tory MP backlash
Labour will build on green belt to boost housing, Starmer says
2021: Conservatives lose Chesham and Amersham
Govt walking election tightrope to build houses and please MPs
Michael Gove today said the government was unapologetically focussing home building on cities because that was the right thing to do “economically, environmentally and culturally”.
What he could have added to that list is that an emphasis on urban areas also makes sense politically for this Tory administration.
The housing secretary is walking a line between trying to increase levels of development while also not petrifying voters and MPs in leafy parts of the country traditionally held by his party.
Just look at the response from South Cambridgeshire MP Anthony Browne to plans laid out for his region – “I will do everything I can to stop the government’s nonsense plans to impose mass housebuilding”, he tweeted.
Why the frosty reception?
Well, Mr Browne has the Liberal Democrats snapping at his heels and is no doubt mindful of the Tory by-election result in the suburban seat of Chesham and Amersham, where a thumping loss was widely put down to local concern about planning and homebuilding.
The practical problem is there’s real doubt as to whether an adequate new housing supply can be provided by just using urban brownfield sites.
The Home Builders Federation said it was “manifestly not possible” and called for the reintroduction of mandatory targets for local authorities and the cutting of environmental red tape they say is holding up the construction of 145,000 new dwellings.
The government says it wants new properties built in the right places. The concern of many is this really means as far away as possible from homeowning Tory voters.
“But I think it is really important to bring local communities along with you, we have housing targets, they are set by local communities and their locally elected representatives, that’s the right thing.
“What central government sitting in Whitehall and Westminster shouldn’t do is ride roughshod over those views, impose top-down targets, carpet over the countryside, I don’t want to do that.”
Conservative MP and Truss-era housing secretary Simon Clarke welcomed Mr Gove’s announcement – but said they “will take serious hard work to deliver” and his party will need to defeat “NIMBYism or NIMBYism will assuredly defeat us”.
NIMBY stands for “not in my backyard”, and is a name for people who oppose housebuilding and development close to them.
Mr Gove also denied his party had watered down its target to build 300,000 new homes a year.
Last year, the government intended to introduce a legal change to make the target a legal requirement.
However, they abandoned the plans after 60 backbenchers signed an amendment which would have scrapped the target.
Mr Gove said the 300,000 target is one the government is “building towards”, adding that inflation was making “delivering against that target more difficult”.
And the prime minister said they are “making good progress towards it.
In 2021/22, some 233,000 homes were completed.
The social housing waiting list is currently at around 1.2 million households.
Shadow housing secretary Lisa Nandy said: “It takes some serious brass neck for the Tories to make yet more promises on housing when the housing crisis has gone from bad to worse on their watch, and when housebuilding is on course to hit its lowest level since the Second World War.
“There are now 800,000 fewer homeowners under 45 than in 2010.
“One of their own ministers says they’ll miss their 300,000 homes a year target “by a country mile”.
“And housebuilding is falling off a cliff because Rishi Sunak rolled over to his own MPs last year.
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“The Home Builders Federation says today’s plans “do little to address the major reasons why housing supply is falling” and “much more decisive action is needed”.
“Over 200 small housebuilders recently said the government’s “current and proposed policies are devastating our industry”.
Opinion by: Sergej Kunz, co-founder of 1inch
Institutional players have been closely watching decentralized finance’s growth. Creating secure and compliant DeFi platforms is the only solution to build trust and attract more institutions.
Clear waters attract big ships
Over the past four years, institutional DeFi adoption has gone from 10% of hedge funds to 47%, and is projected to rise to 65% in 2025. Goldman Sachs is reaching their arms to DeFi for bond issuance and yield farming.
Early adopters are already positioning themselves in onchain finance, including Visa, which has processed over $1 billion in crypto transactions since 2021 and is now testing cross-border payments. In the next two years, institutional adoption will speed up. A compliant regulatory framework that maintains DeFi’s core benefits is necessary for institutional adoption to engage confidently.
DeFi’s institutional trilemma
It is no secret that many DeFi security exploits happen every year. The recent Bybit hack reported a $1.4 billion loss. The breach occurred through a transfer process that was vulnerable to attack. Attacks like these raise concerns about multisignature wallets and blind signing. This happens when users approve transactions without full details, rendering blind signing a significant risk. This case calls for stronger security measures and improvements in user experience.
The threats of theft due to vulnerabilities in smart contracts or mistakes by validators make institutional investors hesitate when depositing large amounts of money into institutional staking pools. Institutions are also at risk of noncompliance due to a lack of clear regulatory frameworks, creating hesitation to enter the space.
The user interface in DeFi is often designed for users with technical expertise. Institutional investors require user-friendly experiences that make DeFi staking possible without relying on third-party intermediaries.
Build it right, and they will come
Institutional interest in bringing traditional assets onchain is enormous, with the tokenized asset market estimated to reach $16 trillion by 2030. To confidently participate in DeFi, institutions need verifiable counterparties that are compliant with regulatory requirements. The entry of traditional institutional players into DeFi has led some privacy advocates to point out that it can counter the essence of decentralization, which forms the bedrock of the ecosystem.
Recent: Securitize to bring BUIDL tokenized fund to DeFi with RedStone price feeds
Institutions must be able to trust DeFi platforms to maintain compliance standards while providing a safe and seamless user interface. A balanced approach is key. DeFi’s permissionless nature can be achieved while maintaining compliance through identity profiles, allowing secure transactions. Similarly, transaction screening tools facilitate real-time monitoring and risk assessment.
Blockchain analytics tools help institutions to maintain compliance with Anti-Money Laundering regulations and prevent interaction with blacklisted wallets. Integrating these tools can help detect and prevent illicit activity, making DeFi safer for institutional engagement.
Intent-based architecture can improve security
The relationship between intent-based architecture and security is evident; the very design is built to reduce risks, creating a more reliable user experience. This protects the user against MEV exploits, a common issue of automated bots scanning for large profitable trades that can be exploited. Intent-based architecture also helps implement compliance frameworks. For instance, restricting order submissions to clean wallets and allowing resolvers to settle only the acceptable orders.
It’s well understood that in traditional DeFi transactions, users rely often on intermediaries like liquidity providers to execute trades or manage funds. This leads to counterparty risk, unauthorized execution and settlement failure. The intent-based architecture supports a trustless settlement that ensures users commit only when all conditions are met, reducing risk and removing blind trust from the picture.
DeFi platforms must simplify interactions and UX for institutional investors. This system bridges the gap between. Through executing offchain while ensuring security, the intent-based architecture makes DeFi safer and more efficient. However, one of the challenges to this includes integrating offchain order matching while maintaining onchain transparency.
Late adopters of DeFi will struggle to keep up
For the early adopters of DeFi, there is a competitive advantage in liquidity access and yield advantages, whereas late adopters will face more regulatory scrutiny and entry barriers. By 2026, the institutional players that have failed to adopt DeFi may struggle to keep up. This is seen in the examples of early adopters like JPMorgan and Citi’s early tokenization projects. TradFi leaders like them are already gearing up for onchain finance.
The way forward
Regulatory bodies, supervisory agencies and policy leaders must provide clear, standardized guidelines to facilitate broader institutional participation. Uniform protocols underpinning wider institutional involvement are underway. DeFi platforms must be prepared beforehand to provide all the necessary pillars of compliance and security to institutional players who want to embrace mainstream adoption. Executing this shall require combined efforts from regulators, developers and institutions.
Opinion by: Sergej Kunz, co-founder of 1inch.
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
Prediction marketplace Kalshi has started taking Bitcoin (BTC) deposits in a bid to onboard more crypto-native users.
The company that lets users bet on events ranging from election outcomes to Rotten Tomatoes film ratings has seen a strong uptake among crypto traders, Kalshi told Cointelegraph on April 9. For instance, event contracts for betting on Bitcoin’s hour-by-hour price changes have seen $143 million in trading volume to date, a spokesperson said.
Kalshi is a derivatives exchange regulated by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). As of April 9, it listed some 50 crypto-related event contracts, including markets for betting on coins’ 2025 highs and lows, as well as on headlines such as US President Donald Trump’s proposed National Bitcoin Reserve.
Kalshi has doubled down on crypto event contract markets. Source: Kalshi
The platform started accepting crypto payments in October when it enabled stablecoin USD Coin (USDC) deposits.
Kalshi relies on ZeroHash — a crypto payments infrastructure provider — for off-ramping BTC and USDC and converting the deposits to US dollars. The exchange accepts BTC deposits only from the Bitcoin network.
Most Kalshi traders no longer expect core tokens to earn positive returns this year. Source: Kalshi
Related: Kalshi traders place the odds of US recession in 2025 at over 61%
More accurate than polls
Launched in 2021, Kalshi rose to prominence ahead of the US’s November elections.
It became a top venue for trading on 2024 political events after winning a lawsuit against the CFTC, which tried to block Kalshi from listing contracts tied to elections.
The regulator argued that political prediction markets threaten the integrity of elections, but industry analysts say they often capture public sentiment more accurately than polls.
For instance, prediction markets, including Kalshi, accurately predicted Trump’s presidential election win even as polls indicated a tossup.
“Event contract markets are a valuable public good for which there is no evidence of significant manipulation or widespread use for any nefarious purposes that the Commission alleges,” Harry Crane, a statistics professor at Rutgers University, said in an August comment letter filed with the CFTC.
As of April 9, Kalshi traders peg the odds of the US entering a recession at 68%, according to its website.
In March, Kalshi partnered with Robinhood to bring prediction markets to the popular online brokerage platform. Robinhood’s stock rose some 8% on the news.
Kalshi competes with Polymarket, a Web3-based prediction platform. Polymarket processed more than $3 billion in trading volumes tied to the US presidential election despite being off-limits for US traders.
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Politics
No crypto project has registered with the SEC and ‘lived to tell the tale’ — House committee hearing
United States securities laws are not flexible enough to account for digital assets, as evidenced by the parade of crypto-native companies that have tried and failed to get into the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) good graces, Rodrigo Seira, special counsel to Cooley LLP, told a House Committee hearing on April 9.
The hearing, titled American Innovation and the Future of Digital Assets Aligning the U.S. Securities Laws for the Digital Age, featured Seira, WilmerHale partner Tiffany J. Smith, Polygon chief legal officer Jake Werrett and Alexandra Thorn, a senior director at the Center for American Progress.
“It is clear that the current securities regulatory framework is not a viable option to regulate crypto. It fails to achieve its stated policy goals,” Seira said in his opening remarks. “[T]he idea that crypto projects can come in and register with the SEC is demonstrably false.”
Cooley LLP special counsel Rodrigo Seira addresses the committee on April 9. Source: House Committee on Financial Services
Seira acknowledged that crypto promoters who raise capital for a new enterprise should be subject to federal securities laws.
“In practice, however, virtually no crypto projects have successfully registered their tokens under federal securities laws and lived to tell the tale,” he said, adding:
Projects that tried to comply with [the] SEC’s current regulatory requirements expended significant resources and effort only to fail or survive in a state of regulatory uncertainty. Moreover, registration is not a simple one-time process. Registering a token in the same manner as a stock triggers an obligation to operate as a publicly reporting company […].”
Related: Crypto has a regulatory capture problem in Washington — or does it?
Righting the ship
In introducing the witnesses, Representative Bryan Steil, who heads the Subcommittee on Digital Assets, Financial Technology, and Artificial Intelligence, acknowledged regulatory roadblocks, which he said were put in place by the previous administration.
Congressman Bryan Steil addresses the hearing on April 9. Source: House Committee on Financial Services
Under President Donald Trump, lawmakers are attempting to right the ship by passing sensible legislation, said Steil.
One of the first steps occurred last week when the House Financial Services Committee advanced the STABLE Act, which is designed to regulate payment stablecoins tied to the US dollar and other fiat currencies.
Source: Financial Services GOP
A month earlier, the Senate Banking Committee advanced the GENIUS Act, which aims to regulate stablecoin issuers by establishing reserve requirements and requiring full compliance with Anti-Money Laundering laws.
The next step is “advancing the second half of this agenda: comprehensive digital asset market structure legislation,” said Steil.
Representative Ro Khanna told a digital asset conference last month that a market structure bill will cross the finish line this year.
The purpose of such legislation is to establish a clear regulatory framework for digital assets, including their legal categories and the enforcement jurisdiction of agencies such as the SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
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