The diversity of digital assets presently lumped together as “crypto” is a branding disaster that shouts criminality. This is reminiscent of “hedge funds” — widely diverse strategies, little understood but often tagged together in the popular mind as opaque, venal, too-clever-by-half and borderline dodgy.

For some, the recent fall in cryptocurrency values (“Crypto’s collapse highlights tensions over policy”, Opinion, May 17) has vindicated hostility to the very idea of this new asset class. Yet other assets (even money itself) suffer periodic, sometimes dramatic, setbacks in their value — the value of your investments could fall, as the ads warn us. So what makes digital assets different?

Digital assets are still emerging and morphing, including their environmental costs (eg, “proof of stake networks”).

There will be blind alleys and blow-ups along the way but digital assets in various forms are here to stay, whether as a speculative asset class — caveat emptor! — or possibly as alternative currencies if the use-case is proven.

Some may wish digital assets would simply go away. They will not, but they will go (or are going) elsewhere if the UK, as a professed home for financial innovation, does not rapidly find a way to understand, “on-board” and regulate digital assets effectively. So, as Helen Thomas’ column indicates, we need a plan that gets beyond rhetoric.

We need to lead the world and learn from mistakes along the way, or stand back and hope to pick up digital business from more innovative financial centres later.

Both may have merits, but too many seem to wish it would all just go away.

Lord Cromwell
House of Lords, London SW1, UK