The FCA has secured High Court undertakings that HTX, formerly Huobi, will not knowingly promote cryptoasset services unlawfully to UK consumers. The FCA commenced proceedings in the Business and Property Division of the High Court on 21 October 2025, alleging breaches of UK financial promotion rules. The FCA publicly announced the enforcement action on 10 February 2026. The case ended in a Tomlin order built on a confidential settlement agreement dated 16 October 2026.
How a promotions breach became litigation
The sequence matters more than the outcome. According to the FCA, HTX had failed repeatedly to engage with it before proceedings began. Once proceedings were under way, HTX took steps to exit the UK. HTX is no longer active in the UK: consumers cannot make deposits and new UK users cannot sign up.
In our reading, the FCA did not need a court to achieve most of that. A warning list entry and a request to the exchange would have been the usual first step. What the court route added is a binding promise, enforceable without a fresh claim, and a set of defendants wide enough to survive a change of ownership. The lesson for an offshore exchange is simple: silence in response to FCA correspondence appears to be what moves a case from a letter to a claim form.
Steve Smart, the FCA’s executive director of enforcement and market oversight, said: “Crypto firms should be under no illusion: being based overseas does not put them beyond the reach of UK law.”
What the order binds
The first defendant, Huobi Global S.A., is a company incorporated in Panama. Under undertaking A, the company will not knowingly, directly or indirectly, and whether through its officers, servants or agents, communicate or cause to be communicated any financial promotion in contravention of section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. Undertaking B spells out the channels: the www.htx.com website or any similar website promulgated by the operator of the exchange, any software application the operator makes available, and any social media platform. The undertakings run until 21 October 2031.
The defendants go beyond the company. The second defendants are persons unknown who own, control or are in control of all or part of www.htx.com or its associated mobile applications. The fourth defendants are persons unknown who currently control promotions on behalf of the HTX Exchange on a list of named social media platforms and messenger services. The fifth defendants are persons unknown who, on or before 31 October 2028, become owner or controller of the HTX Exchange. The order is to be served on the first to fourth defendants under the earlier order of Deputy Master Dovar of 4 February 2026 and publicised to the fifth defendants under the same order.
The mechanics are worth noting. The FCA and Huobi Global may apply to the court to enforce the settlement terms without bringing a new claim. There was no order as to costs. The settlement does not constitute an admission of liability or wrongdoing by Huobi Global or any other person.
The “persons unknown” drafting means the promise travels with the website, the apps and the social accounts, not just with the company that signed it.
What it signals
Three things stand out to us. First, the FCA appears willing to treat a website, an app store listing and a social media account as the thing to be restrained, whoever happens to operate it. A firm that restructures, rebrands or sells the platform does not, on this drafting, shed the obligation. Second, the undertakings bite on knowing communication in breach of section 21, which suggests the FCA is less interested in accidental spill-over than in deliberate UK-facing activity that continues after a firm has been told to stop. Third, the exit itself was voluntary in form but not in substance. HTX will not target, solicit or actively seek to engage UK consumers.
None of this is a finding against HTX, and the terms of the settlement are confidential. But the FCA chose to publish the court order and to describe the exit in plain terms. We expect it to cite the case the next time an offshore exchange ignores its letters.
What still applies
Nothing in the HTX order changes the rules. Section 21 of FSMA still restricts who may communicate a financial promotion to UK consumers, and cryptoasset promotions sit inside that restriction. The FCA’s own description is that crypto remains largely unregulated in the UK, except for anti-money laundering and financial promotions, until October 2027. Those two regimes, AML registration and financial promotions, are therefore the ones that reach an offshore exchange today, and they are the ones the FCA is enforcing.
For the exchange’s own users, the practical obligation is withdrawal. The FCA has pointed UK users to information on HTX’s website about the availability of its services in the UK and the arrangements for withdrawing residual assets. Any exchange leaving the UK should expect to be held to the same standard: a clear notice, a working withdrawal route and no new deposits. The FCA continues to tell consumers to check a firm’s permissions on the FCA Firm Checker. A firm that does not appear there, and markets to UK users anyway, is the profile this case describes.
What firms should do
If you run a non-UK exchange or custodian with UK users or UK-facing marketing, the work this quarter is mapping and response, not restructuring.
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Map every UK-facing channel. The HTX order lists the website, any similar website, every software application and the social accounts. Build the same inventory for your own platform, including affiliate and referral accounts you do not directly operate, and record who controls each one.
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Decide, channel by channel, whether the content is a financial promotion capable of reaching UK consumers. If it is, it must be communicated in a way section 21 permits, or it must be geo-fenced and the fencing must actually work. Test the fencing from a UK connection.
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Answer the FCA. The press release records repeated non-engagement before proceedings began. A short, factual reply from a named compliance contact, within days rather than months, is the cheapest control a firm has. Decide now who signs that letter.
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Write the exit plan before you need it. If the decision is to leave the UK, the order shows what the FCA treats as a clean exit: no new sign-ups, no deposits, a published notice and a withdrawal route. Draft those pages now and keep them in a drawer.
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Check your corporate perimeter. The fifth-defendant drafting reaches future owners and controllers. If a sale, merger or re-domicile is in prospect, the buyer’s lawyers should read any undertakings the platform has given. Where an undertaking or a court order is in play, that is legal advice, and you should take it from a lawyer.
Taft helps non-UK exchanges and custodians work out which UK rules reach them, build the channel inventory, and set up the response process, as part of our launch and expand work. For the wider picture of the AML and promotions regimes and the October 2027 timetable, see our crypto compliance guide for digital assets.
Sources
- FCA stops HTX's crypto promotions, UK FCA
- Claim No. FS-2025-000015, UK FCA
Taft does not provide legal advice. Content is for informational purposes only and subject to regulatory guidance.