Brexit anxiety be damned: The United Kingdom is moving to protect London’s leading role in the global fintech ecosystem. Reuters reported the Bank of England published a detailed plan on Wednesday for widening access to Britain's interbank payments system and encouraging mobile person-to-person payments, also called P2P.

While the U.K. is beefing up fintech-friendly legislation, U.S. innovators across the pond are begging American leaders not to continue with a proposal that the Bitcoin Foundation warned “is sure to threaten the existence of the fintech industry nationwide.” It’s easy to imagine British fintech rivals smirking over a cup of tea as Silicon Valley teeters on the brink of a legislative doomsday.

Read: Blockchain Technology Regulations: What US Can Learn From Singapore

According to a comparative study published in the Global journal of Economics and Business Administration, the U.S. largely relies on existing laws to supervise the P2P lending industry. You can think of classic P2P as companies like Venmo, compared to startups like SoFi offering P2P lending. Reliance on legacy laws has inadvertently given the U.S. far stricter P2P lending regulations than the U.K. and China. Many experts also think the American framework is also dangerously vague in some areas, drawing comparisons to the subprime mortgage crisis.

Even so, the P2P lending landscape is a wonderland compared to U.S. lawmakers’ scattered approach to cryptocurrency regulation. Some states are passing constructive laws and guidelines on a local level. But many authorities nationwide are conflating anonymous cryptocurrency trading with money laundering and misinterpreting how digital assets transcend borders altogether.

The Uniform Law Commission is meeting in San Diego this week to hammer out a plan for regulating tokens like bitcoin. They proposed a draft legislation called the Uniform Regulation of Virtual Currency Businesses Act, based on the notoriously misguided BitLicense approach in New York. Requiring bitcoin companies to get a certified license created a bureaucratic nightmare and stifled New York startups. After the BitLicense policy was signed into law in 2014, only two licenses were granted by the summer of 2016.

The ULC is supposed to help recommend cohesive frameworks across state lines, which makes their proposal particularly daunting even though states like Delaware are embracing blockchain and engaging directly with startups.

Llew Claasen, executive director of the nonprofit Bitcoin Foundation, criticized the idea of requiring more licenses for cryptocurrency startups in dozens of states. “This is not how you regulate cryptocurrency, unless you want to live in the financial backwaters and encourage fintech innovation to move elsewhere,” Claasen said in a blog post.

Read: Chicago Looks to Become Fintech Mecca As Lawmakers Show They Actually Understand Blockchain

Despite the terrible weather, London has something going for it that California still lacks. British decision-makers have seen the writing on the wall.

The Bank of England is now exploring ways to officially integrate cryptocurrency, testing Ripple’s blockchain technology for cross-border payments. Meanwhile, the BoE’s revamped rules will allow remittance firms, like the startup WorldRemit which processes over 650,000 transactions a month, and companies that offer prepaid online accounts, just to name a few beneficiaries, to access “ real time gross settlement,” which will make money transfers much faster starting in 2018.

Remittance alone, not to mention the P2P landscape, is a booming market. Business Insider reported the startup Transferwise now processes over $1 billion a month. The World Bank estimates $429 billion in remittance, money sent by immigrants to their homelands, flowed to developing nations in 2016. Fintech hubs that encourage P2P remittance business could potentially reap economic benefits akin to global trading routes in days of old. The Silk Road of the future will be a digital network paved by fintech innovators.

Britain's new system will give fintech startups a leg up, helping them compete against traditional power players. Reuters reported there are roughly 450 non-bank payment service providers operating in the country and the new system will reduce everyone’s dependence on London’s biggest banks, including Barclays and HSBC. Those very same old school banks appear to welcome the change. “This announcement further strengthens the UK’s credentials as the global capital of fintech," Ed Carrell, Barclays' managing director and head of commercial transformation in London, told International Business Times in an email.

Increasing competition will have multiple benefits beyond boosting the local startup industry. BoE Governor Mark Carney said in a statement that this move will “support financial stability through greater diversity and risk-reducing payment technologies."

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