The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) issued 146 alerts within the first 24 hours of its new crypto marketing regime.

The authority’s new crypto advertising rules, which came into force 8 October and are intended to protect consumers, stipulate that promotions must be clear, fair and not misleading, labelled with prominent risk warnings and must not inappropriately incentivise people to invest.

The FCA said it expects businesses, including social media platforms, app stores, search engines, domain name registrars and payments firms to consider the alerts it has issued and “play their part” in protecting UK consumers from illegal promotions.

It also advised consumers to check the FCA’s Warning List before making any investment in crypto, and restated its advice that purchasing cryptoassets remains high-risk and that they [customers] should be “prepared to lose all their money.”

When the FCA’s plans for the regime were announced in 2022, the government said the promotion of qualifying cryptoassets would be subject to FCA rules in line with the same standards that other financial promotions such as stocks, shares, and insurance products are held to.

Of the rules, Sheldon Mills, executive director, consumers and competition at the FCA previously said: “Our rules give people the time and the right risk warnings to make an informed choice.”

“It is up to people to decide whether they buy crypto, but research shows many regret making a hasty decision,” he added.

Earlier this year, Natwest introduced a daily cap of £1000 to crypto exchanges, along with a 30-day payment limit of £5000.

HSBC and Nationwide have also made similar moves, while reports recently emerged that Chase UK was set to introduce an outright ban on customers being able to make cryptocurrency transactions with their debit cards from 16 October.

"We've seen an increase in the number of crypto scams targeting UK consumers, so we have taken the decision to prevent the purchase of crypto assets on a Chase debit card or by transferring money to a crypto site from a Chase account," a spokesperson for the bank told Reuters.

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