Former minister Lord Zac Goldsmith banned from driving after speeding four times
Former environment minister Zac Goldsmith has been temporarily banned from driving after he was caught speeding four times last year, including twice on the same road.
The Conservative peer, 48, cannot drive until mid-March when he will be sentenced for exceeding speed limits in a hybrid electric Volkswagen Golf on roads in London between April and August 2023.
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Lord Goldsmith, who has pleaded guilty to the four incidents, also faces three other driving-related offences, including one in Somerset, Westminster Magistrates’ Court heard on Thursday.
The first offence happened on 27 April last year, when he was caught travelling along Chelsea Embankment at 29mph, despite the limit being 20mph, according to court papers.
Just over a month later, on 31 May, the Tory environmentalist drove at 46mph on the A316 in Twickenham, which has a 40mph limit.
He was caught speeding on that same road on 3 August, while driving at 47mph.
A month before the August incident, on 18 July , Lord Goldsmith exceeded the 20mph limit on Bayswater Road, next to Kensington Gardens, while travelling at 28mph.
District Judge Nina Tempia imposed an interim disqualification, banning him from driving until his sentencing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 18 March.
The maximum penalty for speeding is a fine and penalty points or a driving disqualification.
Last April, then immigration minister Robert Jenrick was disqualified from driving for six months for breaking a temporary motorway speed limit by almost 30mph.
Zac Goldsmith is a close ally of Boris Johnson
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Lord Goldsmith, who unsuccessfully ran to be London mayor in 2016, was previously Conservative MP for Richmond Park before he lost his seat at the 2019 general election.
Despite his rejection by voters in the southwest London constituency, then prime minister Boris Johnson made him a Tory peer in the House of Lords so he could keep his role as environment minister.
Lord Goldsmith retained a ministerial position under Rishi Sunak but quit in June in protest at the government’s position on climate change.
The barbed resignation came days after being named in the partygate interference report, which investigated attempts to undermine the Privileges Committee’s investigation into whether Mr Johnson misled parliament over the scandal.
Since then Lord Goldsmith has claimed the Conservatives don’t have an answer on “the biggest challenge we’ve ever faced” – the climate crisis, and said he is even tempted to vote for Labour at the next general election.
SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw, expected to leave the agency in less than a month, used one of her final public speaking engagements to address the regulator’s response to digital assets.
Speaking at a Brookings Institution event on Thursday, Crenshaw said standards at the SEC had “eroded” in the last year, with “markets [starting] to look like casinos,” and “chaos” as the agency dismissed many years-long enforcement cases, reduced civil penalties and filed fewer actions overall.
The commissioner, expected to depart in January after her term officially ended in June 2024, also criticized many crypto users and the agency’s response to the markets.
“People invest in crypto because they see some others getting rich overnight,” said Crenshaw. “Less visible are the more common stories of people losing their shirts. One thing that consistently puzzles me about crypto is what are cryptocurrency prices based on? Many, but not all, crypto purchasers are not trading based on economic fundamentals.”
She added:
“I think it’s safe to say [crypto purchasers are] speculating, reacting to hysteria from promoters, feeding a desire to gamble, wash trading to push up prices, or, as one Nobel laureate has posited, ‘betting on the popularity of the politicians who support or stand to benefit from the success of crypto.’”
In contrast to Crenshaw’s remarks, SEC Chair Paul Atkins, Commissioner Hester Peirce and Commissioner Mark Uyeda have all publicly expressed their support for the agency’s approach to digital assets and the Trump administration’s direction of policy.
Peirce and Atkins spoke at a Blockchain Association Policy Summit this week to discuss crypto regulation and a path forward on market structure under consideration in the Senate.
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During the Thursday event’s question-and-answer session, Crenshaw expanded on her views of crypto, stating that it was a “tiny piece of the market,” and suggested that the SEC focus on other regulatory concerns. In addition, she expressed concern that the agency was heading toward giving crypto companies an exception from policies that applied to traditional finance.
“I do worry that as the crypto rules are perhaps implemented, or perhaps we just put out more guidance […] where we say they are not securities, where we loosen the basic fundamentals of the securities laws so that they can operate in our system, but without any of the guardrails that we have in place. I do worry that that can lead to more significant market contagion,” said Crenshaw.
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The departure of Crenshaw would leave the SEC with three Republican commissioners, two of whom were nominated by US President Donald Trump. As of Thursday, Trump had not made any announcements signaling that he ever planned to nominate another Democrat to the SEC, and Crenshaw said the agency’s staff had been reduced by about 20% in the last year.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission also faces a dearth of leadership, with many commissioners leaving the agency in 2025. As of December, acting Chair Caroline Pham was the sole remaining CFTC commissioner and a Republican. However, the US Senate is soon expected to vote on Trump’s nominee, Michael Selig, to chair the agency after Pham.
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The Belarusian Ministry of Information has blocked access to crypto exchanges Bybit, OKX, Bitget, Gate, Bingx and Weex, it said on Thursday.
According to a government announcement, the ministry has restricted access to the global domains of several crypto exchanges, citing “inappropriate advertising” under Article 511 of the Law on Mass Media.
Cointelegraph reached out to the blocked exchanges but had not received responses at the time of publication.
Belarus is a close ally of Russia on the world stage. The domain restriction comes on the same day that Vladimir Chistyukhin, first deputy chairman at the Central Bank of Russia, told state-backed outlet RIA Novosti that it “agreed to allow qualified investors” into the crypto market. The remarks build on recent reports that the institution was considering easing restrictions on cryptocurrencies in response to the sweeping sanctions imposed on the country.
Russia disclosed plans in late April to allow crypto access only to “super-qualified investors,” defined by wealth and income thresholds of over 100 million rubles ($1.2 million) or an annual income of at least 50 million rubles ($630,000), effectively limiting participation to high-net-worth individuals.
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Russia’s central bank sees crypto’s utility
Chistyukhin said a “crucial point that cannot be ignored” is that “cryptocurrencies are currently being used not only as an investment but also as a means of cross-border payments.” His comments echoed recent statements over allowing broader crypto access in Russia as a response to the international sanctions:
“We certainly want to protect Russian retail investors as much as possible from transactions with such a risky asset. On the other hand, we understand that, under the current circumstances, some international payments can only be made using cryptocurrency.“
Chistyukhin said there are currently about one million qualified investors able to access crypto assets in Russia, noting that investors would also be assessed on their knowledge of cryptocurrencies. He conceded that allowing non-qualified investors to access crypto is on the table, but said it would require extreme caution.
“Specifically, such investors could be granted access only to the most liquid instruments,” he said.
Chistyukhin highlighted the need for “establishing strict restrictions and prohibitions” and said “it’s expected that cryptocurrency transactions will be conducted primarily through existing market participants, under existing licenses,” adding that “anything outside this framework will be considered illegal.“
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Trust Wallet, the self-custodial crypto wallet owned by Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, has partnered with European fintech unicorn and digital banking giant Revolut to introduce a new way to purchase crypto assets on its platform.
Trust Wallet users can now buy Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and Solana (SOL) with Revolut through a direct integration, the company announced on Thursday.
With a minimum purchase starting at 10 euros ($12) and capped at 23,000 euros ($26,950) daily and per transaction, Trust Wallet’s new buy option is expected to provide a faster and easier way to access crypto from Europe.
In October, Revolut scored regulatory approval from the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission to offer crypto services across 30 European Economic Area markets in compliance with the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) framework.
Stablecoins like USDC not supported, for now
The integration will initially support only three crypto assets, but the companies said they expect to add stablecoins such as Circle’s USDC (USDC) at a later stage.
The feature enables zero-fee crypto purchases using multiple fiat currencies supported by Revolut, including the euro, the British pound, as well as the Czech koruna, Danish Krone, Polish Złoty and others.
While Revolut–Trust Wallet crypto purchases are offered with zero fees, adding money to a Revolut account is not free of charge in many cases, including via bank transfers, card top-ups and cash deposits. Cash deposits are subject to a 1.5% fee and are limited to $3,000 per calendar month, according to Revolut’s FAQs.
Related: Crypto self-custody is a fundamental right, says SEC’s Hester Peirce
The integration came shortly after Revolut secured a $75 billion company valuation after completing a private share sale in late November. “This makes us Europe’s most valuable private company and in the top 10 of the world’s most valuable private companies,” Revolut said in a post on X.
CZ-backed Trust Wallet has been actively tapping into trending market sectors, including prediction markets and real-world asset tokenization, expanding access to these offerings for self-custody users.
Cointelegraph contacted Revolut and Trust Wallet for comment on the integration, but had not received a response by publication.
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