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Stablecoin Tether and Circle’s USDC dominate the market.

Justin Tallis | Afp | Getty Images

The U.K. should establish a national stablecoin strategy to enable adoption of the tokens and avoid falling behind the U.S. on the disruptive new technology, several major crypto firms said Wednesday.

In an open letter addressed to Finance Minister Rachel Reeves, 30 crypto industry figures said that the U.K. “must act now to avoid being a rule-taker rather than a rule-maker in the digital asset era.”

“To ensure the UK is at the forefront, we believe a proactive, coordinated national strategy is needed – one that positions stablecoins not as a risk to be contained, but as a financial infrastructure to be responsibly embraced,” the letter said.

The U.K. Treasury department was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.

Stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency that is pegged to an existing government-backed currency. There are several stablecoins in issuance, however the most commonly known are Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC — both of which are tied to the U.S. dollar.

The entire stablecoin market is worth over $280 billion, according to CoinGecko data. But for stablecoins pegged to the British pound, their combined market capitalization stands at just £461,224 ($621,197).

Crypto industry insiders have taken issue with Britain’s regulatory stance on stablecoins, saying it puts the nascent industry — and, in turn, the U.K.’s financial services landscape — at a disadvantage.

One aspect of the U.K.’s approach that worries the industry is the legal definition of stablecoins as “crypto-assets with reference to fiat currency.”

“This definition focuses on form rather than function,” they said in the open letter Wednesday. “This is akin to defining a cheque as paper with reference to currency, when both are essentially negotiable instruments backed by regulated issuers.”

A national stablecoin strategy would strengthen the U.K.’s role as a global financial center, generate new fee and foreign exchange revenue streams and support demand for gilts through new digital channels, the signatories to the letter said.

The letter was signed by industry executives from Coinbase, Kraken, Copper, Fireblocks, BitGo and VanEck.

Still, stablecoins are not without their concerns.

In 2022, a stablecoin named terra and its sister token luna both collapsed to $0 after a failure in the cryptocurrencies’ underlying technology. That also caused the value of USDT to temporarily fall below its $1 peg. USDT is currently worth $1.

In a research note published Wednesday, HSBC’s head of digital assets research, Daragh Maher, wrote that stablecoins could help bridge the gap between traditional finance and digital assets.

“They are basically the cash equivalent of digital assets,” Maher argued. “They are the reference or base currency for nearly every crypto asset. They can also be used for transferring money using blockchain pay rails rather than traditional banking methods.”

However, he added that regulatory issues remain the biggest hurdle to stablecoin adoption. “The key to capitalising on the potential of stablecoins lies in creating an appropriate regulatory environment for the sector,” said Maher.

How a $60 billion crypto collapse got regulators worried

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Broadcom CEO says generative AI will become a much larger part of global GDP

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Broadcom CEO says generative AI will become a much larger part of global GDP

The main competitor we have is merchant silicon, says Broadcom CEO Hock Tan

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan told CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Monday that artificial intelligence could become a larger part of global GDP as the technology spreads across industries.

Tan said the current global GDP sits around $110 trillion, with 30% of that figure “valued from industries related to knowledge-based, technology-intensive.”

“And you put in generative AI, you create intelligence in a lot of other aspects of society,” Tan continued. “That 30% say will grow to 40% of all GDP. That’s $10 trillion a year.”

If AI grows and becomes responsible for a larger piece of global GDP as Tan predicts, it would be a boon to the nascent tech sector and all the industries it relies on. Broadcom makes chips and networking equipment and has been a huge beneficiary of the AI boom as hyperscalers buy up its products. The stock is currently up 53.86%.

Broadcom and OpenAI announced their official partnership on Monday, saying they would jointly build and deploy 10 gigawatts of custom artificial intelligence accelerators. The move is part of a broader effort to scale AI across the industry. Broadcom shares surged in response to the news, up 9.88% by market close.

Broadcom and OpenAI’s deal is the latest in a slew of pricey partnerships among key Big Tech players related to AI.

Tan said OpenAI is “one of those few players in the forefront of creating foundation models,” and noted that even as a private company, the ChatGPT maker is worth about $500 billion. According to Tan, Broadcom’s “hard-nosed” approach to business doesn’t keep the company from looking several years in the future “at this phenomenon, this wave called generative AI.”

Broadcom is tight-lipped about its customers, but said earlier this year it was developing new AI chips with three large cloud customers. Management announced last month it had secured $10 billion in chip orders from a fourth unnamed client.

Tan told Cramer that Broadcom is working closely with “about seven players,” four of which he defined as “real customers,” or ones “who have given us production purchase orders at scale.”

“We feel very good about it,” Tan said of Broadcom’s partnerships. “Because each of these guys need a lot of compute capacity for them to basically play in this game and eventually win this game of creating the best foundation model in the world.”

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Musk calls for federal troops in San Francisco even as Benioff softens stance

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Musk calls for federal troops in San Francisco even as Benioff softens stance

Marc Benioff, chief executive officer of Salesforce, speaks during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 18, 2024.

Halil Sagirkaya | Anadolu | Getty Images

As Salesforce welcomes tens of thousands of people to San Francisco for its annual Dreamforce conference, CEO Marc Benioff has found himself in the center of local controversy on a national issue.

In an interview with The New York Times published on Friday, Benioff appeared eager for President Donald Trump to send federal troops to his company’s hometown, inserting himself into a national debate about whether the president should call the National Guard into various Democrat-led cities that Trump has maligned.

The Trump administration recently deployed the National Guard to Portland and Chicago, sparking protests and lawsuits.

“We don’t have enough cops, so if they can be cops, I’m all for it,” Benioff told the Times.

Benioff subsequently softened his comments, writing on X on Sunday that safety is “first and foremost, the responsibility of our city and state leaders.” But a heated online conversation was already well underway.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who moved to Texas from California, said federal intervention is needed to deal with crime in San Francisco. In posts on his social network X on Sunday, he said it would be “the only solution at this point,” and that “nothing else has or will work.” A day earlier, Musk, who has drawn criticism for his own drug use, characterized downtown San Francisco as a “drug zombie apocalypse.”

Musk still has big business in and around San Francisco. His artificial intelligence startup xAI, which owns X, has a sizable office in the city, and his brain computer interface company, Neuralink, recently leased a large property in South San Francisco. Tesla relocated to Texas, but the automaker’s engineering headquarters remains in Palo Alto, just south of San Francisco.

Musk’s call for U.S. troops came in response to social media posts by Tom Wolf, who describes himself as a “a formerly homeless recovering addict in San Francisco,” and an “advocate for addiction recovery.”

If you want to keep federal troops out of San Francisco, remove the organized drug dealers and 80% of the problem goes away,” Wolf wrote. “If you don’t, you reap what you sow.”

Musk shared Wolf’s post to his more than 227 million listed followers on X.

Neither Benioff nor Musk immediately responded to requests for comment. CNBC also reached out to Tesla, xAI and Salesforce for comment but did not hear back.

San Francisco rolls out Microsoft's Copilot to city staff

Local officials loudly opposed the idea of bringing in federal troops.

Brooke Jenkins, San Francisco’s district attorney, wrote on X after the Benioff interview that, “I can’t be silent any longer.”

Jenkins accused Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem of turning “so-called public safety and immigration enforcement into a form of government sponsored violence against U.S. citizens, families, and ethnic groups,” and said that if anyone is using excessive force or illegally harassing residents, “I will not hesitate to do my job and hold you accountable just like I do other violators of the law every single day.”

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, who defeated incumbent London Breed in November in part by promising to clean up San Francisco’s streets, wrote on X on Sunday that “crime is down 30% and tent encampments are at an all-time low.” He didn’t directly address Benioff or Dreamforce, but noted that tens of thousand of people are coming to the city for activities including concerts and Fleet Week, and that public safety is critical.

“San Francisco is on the rise,” he wrote

In Benioff’s follow-up comments after his interview with the Times, the Salesforce CEO praised Lurie’s efforts to increase police hiring and retain law enforcement.

Dreamforce, which launched in 2003, kicks off on Tuesday and runs through Thursday. The event is being held at the Moscone Center and occupies much of the surrounding area in downtown San Francisco.

Garry Tan, CEO of startup incubator Y Combinator, wrote on X that “We don’t need the National Guard,” but he used his post to go after a frequent local target for techies: Chesa Boudin and progressives.

Boudin was district attorney in San Francisco until 2022, when he was removed in a recall election after critics railed against what they viewed as his unwillingness to prosecute violent criminals. Now the judges are the problem, Tan said.

“We need new judges who are not hardcore Chesa Boudin-style activists who work to keep drug dealers out of jail even though the police, the district attorney and the people of SF want them locked up,” he wrote. “It’s shockingly that simple in SF.”

WATCH: President Trump to activate the National Guard in Washington, D.C.

President Trump to activate the National Guard in Washington, DC

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How Broadcom’s big OpenAI deal fits into the data center boom and what it means for the AI trade

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How Broadcom's big OpenAI deal fits into the data center boom and what it means for the AI trade

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