The swift growth in bitcoin and other crypto-currencies over the past year had originally encouraged regulators and government officials to take a closer look into the sector.

Yet the recent drop in bitcoin has prevented officials from investigating quite as extensively as first planned.

British regulators and officials informed a conference they were focusing on how 2,000 crypto-assets fit into existing rules before considering any kind of adjustments.

Despite the UK’s decision to hold off, US securities took action against two crypto-currency start-ups last week, after Airfox and Paragon Coin were caught selling tokens to the public which were not registered as security offerings.

Gillian Dorner, Deputy Director for Financial Services at Britain’s finance ministry, said: “We want to take the time to look at that in a bit more depth and make sure we take a proportionate approach.”