FCA, HTX in Settlement Talks Over Illegal UK Crypto Promotions: Report

The Financial Conduct Authority and HTX are “in talks” to negotiate a settlement in the regulator’s case over unlawful crypto promotions to UK consumers, with London’s High Court pausing proceedings until late August to let the two sides reach terms, Reuters reported from court filings. The sides exchanged emails in March, opened three months of talks and extended them by a further two on June 25.

The FCA issued proceedings in the Chancery Division on October 21 last year, in the first enforcement action of its kind against a crypto exchange over marketing, with the claim itself published in February. It is seeking an injunction and a declaration that the defendants breached section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act, which bars unauthorized financial promotions.

The particulars of claim name Huobi Global S.A., a company incorporated in Panama in May 2023, alongside four categories of “persons unknown”: whoever owns or controls htx.com, whoever the exchange’s own user agreement means by “HTX Operators,” whoever runs its social accounts, and anyone who assumes those roles before October 31, 2028. The exchange’s terms define its operators as “all parties that run the Platform” without naming any of them, and provide for that identity to change at any time. Justin Sun, who took a controlling stake in 2022, is not named.

A test purchase from a UK IP address

The claim sets out how the regulator established that UK users could still trade. An FCA employee, working from a UK IP address, bought cryptoassets through the exchange’s peer-to-peer service and executed futures trades on two pairs, having verified their identity with a UK driving license.

The FCA also points to the site operating in English, accepting GBP, and accepting UK photo ID, and notes that HTX’s own terms bar UK retail users only from derivatives, not from other cryptoassets, while not actually preventing them from trading futures. HTX went on the FCA’s warning list in October 2023, the day the rules took effect, and did not answer the regulator’s letter before action in August 2025.

The negotiations run alongside sanctions from two directions, with the UK having sanctioned HTX and Sun over alleged links to Russian sanctions evasion and the EU naming the exchange in its own Russia measures two months later. The FCA claim is separate and concerns marketing alone.

HTX and the FCA declined to comment on the talks to Reuters, though an HTX spokesperson said the exchange “remains dedicated to upholding high standards of compliance, transparency, and user protection.”