Most UK Crypto Campaigns Are Illegal Under the FCA's Promotion Rules

The FCA's cryptoasset financial-promotions regime has been in force since 8 October 2023, and it classifies cryptoassets as Restricted Mass Market Investments (FCA PS23/6). The label decides what follows.

Restricted Mass Market Investment means you may promote to ordinary retail consumers, unlike the hardest category which bars mass marketing outright, but every promotion has to clear the regime's controls.

The shift for a marketer is that a UK crypto promotion is not a creative decision carrying some compliance risk. It is a regulated communication that is either lawful or an offence, with nothing in between. That changes the first question from "will this convert" to "am I allowed to say this, and am I allowed to be the one saying it".

Before any content question there is a gatekeeping one, and the FCA sets out exactly four ways through it (marketing to UK consumers). The firm is FCA authorised. The firm is registered with the FCA under the Money Laundering Regulations. The promotion is approved by an FCA-authorised person acting as a section 21 approver. Or the promotion falls inside an exemption in the Financial Promotion Order. There is no fifth route.

This is the rule that catches most campaigns, because the standard tactic of handing a token to creators and letting them post sits outside all four. A paid creator posting a crypto promotion to a UK audience, without approval from an authorised person, is communicating an unlawful financial promotion.

And being based somewhere else does not help. The regime applies to every firm marketing cryptoassets to UK consumers regardless of whether the firm is based overseas, and regardless of what technology is used to make the promotion. That is the sentence a team outside the UK most often assumes does not apply to them, and it is why a global exchange was the subject of the first enforcement action.

The stakes are set by statute rather than by policy. Breaching section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act is a criminal offence punishable by up to two years' imprisonment, an unlimited fine, or both. So "who is allowed to say it" has to be settled before a single clip is briefed, and for paid creators it belongs in the contract rather than the brief.

Answer for a campaign you are actually planning. The check below reports which controls you have not said are in place, and which one stops everything rather than leaving a gap. The frictions only appear if the promotion is a direct offer, because they do not apply otherwise.

Every in-scope crypto promotion must carry the FCA's prescribed risk warning, clearly and prominently, and the wording is set. It is the most visible control and the easiest to fail on a short-form clip.

Two operational points follow. Clearly and prominently means the warning has to be where the audience actually sees it, so on a vertical video that is on-screen rather than in a caption or behind a link. And because the same promotion travels across surfaces, the warning travels with it, which is why it belongs in the brief and, for paid creators, in the contract.

Confirm the exact current wording and presentation against the FCA's rules before you ship. The phrasing is prescribed, and small deviations are what reviews flag.

Before a first-time UK investor can receive a direct offer, the FCA requires positive frictions, and they are deliberately the opposite of what crypto growth is built for.

Each of those is a step the classic "click the ad, deposit in ninety seconds" flow does not have. That flow is not lawful for UK first-time investors, and a compliant funnel has to be built with the frictions in rather than bolted on afterwards.

The FCA bans monetary and non-monetary incentives that encourage investment in cryptoassets, which removes refer-a-friend, sign-up bonuses and similar loops for UK consumers.

The ban is broad on purpose, and it is not limited to cash. A "refer a friend and you both get tokens" offer, a "deposit and get a bonus" hook, a new-joiner reward: all are incentives to invest, and all fall inside the prohibition when aimed at UK consumers.

That closes a large part of the standard crypto playbook in one line. If a UK promotion offers a benefit for investing or referring, it breaches the regime, and no amount of disclosure fixes it.

This is not paper law. In February 2026 the FCA began proceedings against HTX, its first enforcement action against a crypto firm for illegally marketing to UK consumers.

The detail worth reading twice is where the promotions were running: HTX continued publishing promotions in breach of the rules on its website and on TikTok, X, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. The regulator did not pursue an ad account, it pursued promotions across five mainstream platforms.

And it went further than the firm. The FCA asked the social media companies to block HTX's accounts for UK consumers, and asked Google Play and the Apple App Store to remove HTX's apps in the UK. Since proceedings were issued, HTX has restricted new UK customers from registering. That is the part a growth team should notice: the enforcement reached the distribution, not just the entity.

The scale of the wider activity is on the same record. The FCA issued 2,329 warnings about unauthorised or potentially scam firms and individuals in 2025, and 1,528 of those concerned unauthorised crypto entities and promotions over 1 January to 31 December 2025. Crypto is the majority of its promotion-alert work.

Criminal proceedings are also not the only lever. The FCA can put a firm on its Warning List, request take-downs of websites in breach, and take enforcement action, which is a faster set of tools than a prosecution and the one a marketing team is far more likely to meet.

The promotions regime is already enforced, and a broader authorisation regime is coming behind it. The direction of travel is more regulation, not less.

The FCA published its final rules and guidance on 30 June 2026. Firms can apply for authorisation between 30 September 2026 and 28 February 2027, and the new mandatory regime comes into force on 25 October 2027. Trading platforms, intermediaries, custodians, stablecoin issuers and firms arranging staking will all need FCA authorisation to operate in the UK.

For a marketer the implication is planning, not panic. A campaign structure that only works because a firm is currently outside the authorisation perimeter has a known expiry date, and that date is now published.

The FCA regime is the UK content-and-conduct layer, and it sits alongside three others. Confusing one for another is how a brand concludes it is compliant when it is not.

The FCA decides what a UK promotion may say and who may communicate it. The platform layer decides where a crypto ad may run at all, mapped at where you can and can't run crypto ads. The EU has its own parallel content regime, covered at the EU's MiCA marketing rules, so a campaign spanning both markets answers to both. And the contract layer is how you bind a paid creator to run only the approved, warning-carrying version, covered at the KOL contract terms that hold.

Two more pages sit alongside. Whether a specific undisclosed paid post is exposed is at the legal risk of an undisclosed paid post, and whether a creator is worth paying at all is how to vet a crypto KOL. Line the layers up and a UK campaign is lawful by design. Leave a gap and it is an illegal promotion by default.

· FCA Policy Statement PS23/6, financial promotion rules for cryptoassets — the policy statement: regime in force from 8 October 2023; cryptoassets classified as Restricted Mass Market Investments; clear risk warnings; a ban on incentives to invest; positive frictions including a 24-hour cooling-off period for first-time investors; client categorisation as Restricted, High Net Worth or Certified Sophisticated on a signed declaration valid for 12 months; and appropriateness assessments.

· FCA, cryptoasset firms marketing to UK consumers — the guidance and section 21 approvers: four lawful routes to communicate a promotion, being FCA authorisation, MLR registration with the FCA, approval by an FCA-authorised person acting as a section 21 approver, or an exemption in the Financial Promotion Order. The regime applies to all firms marketing cryptoassets to UK consumers including those based overseas, regardless of the technology used. Breaching section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act is a criminal offence punishable by up to two years' imprisonment, an unlimited fine, or both. The FCA may also add firms to its Warning List, request take-downs of websites in breach, and take enforcement action.

· FCA enforcement against HTX — the press release: the first enforcement action against a crypto firm for illegally marketing to UK consumers; promotions continued on its website and on TikTok, X, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube; the FCA asked social media companies to block the accounts for UK consumers and asked Google Play and the Apple App Store to remove the apps in the UK; HTX has since restricted new UK registrations.

· FCA alert volume — 1,528 alerts on unauthorised crypto entities and promotions for 1 January to 31 December 2025, from the FCA's freedom of information response of February 2026, and 2,329 warnings in total about unauthorised or potentially scam firms and individuals in 2025.

· The future regime — a new regime for cryptoasset regulation and how the gateway will operate: final rules and guidance published 30 June 2026; applications open 30 September 2026 and close 28 February 2027; the new regime comes into force 25 October 2027.

· On method. Every requirement and figure above was checked against the FCA's own pages. Where a page could not be opened directly from our environment, the check was made against that same text as indexed, not against a secondary write-up. No penalty amount is stated for HTX, because none was announced.