The Financial Conduct Authority has settled on a disclosure-and-suitability model rather than an access ban. Retail investors can reach a wider set of crypto products, provided platforms can evidence that each customer understood what they were buying.
The operational burden sits with platforms
Appropriateness testing has to be genuine rather than a checkbox, risk warnings must follow prescribed wording, and first-time investors get a cooling-off period. Firms that built onboarding for speed will need to rebuild parts of it.
Our read
This is the more defensible position. Prohibition pushed UK retail flow offshore to venues with no consumer protection at all, which is a worse outcome than a supervised domestic market with friction in the right places.
The measure of success will be whether complaint volumes fall, not whether trading volumes rise.
Access with guardrails
Lifting restrictions while imposing appropriateness tests and clear risk warnings is a middle path that neither camp finds satisfying.
The measurable outcome is whether UK users move back onshore from unregulated venues, which is the stated aim.
