Reuter cited court documents reporting that the British Financial Conduct Regulatory Authority (FCA) was in the process of reconciling itself with the encryption trading platform HTX on an illegal promotion case. The High Court of London has suspended case proceedings until late August to allow the parties to continue negotiations.
Case focused on British promotion.
FCA filed this lawsuit last October. This is one of the first enforcement actions in the UK against the marketing of encrypted trading platforms. The regulator sought a court injunction and sought confirmation that the defendant had violated section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act.
The subject of the litigation covers the Platform's controller
The accused listed in the indictment documents include Huobi Global S.A., registered in Panama in May 2023, and four categories of “persons unknown”. These include the owner or controller of htx.com, the “HTX operator” referred to in the user agreement, the platform social account operator, and any person who took over the role before 31 October 2028.
Court documents show that HTX ' s user agreement defines the operator as “all parties to the operating platform”, but does not name a specific entity and leaves room for change at any time. It was reported that Sun Yao Sun, who gained a control interest in 2022, was not listed as an accused.
FCA claims that British users are still tradable.
FCA explained its evidence in its pleadings. Using the UK IP address, a supervisor purchased encrypted assets through HTX point-to-point services and traded two futures contract transactions after completing the British driver ' s licence identification.
The regulator also noted that the HTX website provided an English interface, received Pounds sterling and supported British photo identification. At the same time, the Platform ' s provisions limit the participation of retail users in British derivative transactions only, but do not prevent them from trading other encrypted assets; in practice, the relevant users are not effectively intercepted outside futures transactions.
The alert list is still pending.
HTX was added to the FCA alert list in October 2023, the day the new rules were introduced in English encryption. It was also reported that HTX had not responded to the pre-suit communication sent by the FCA in August 2025.
At the time of this reconciliation negotiations, HTX was under pressure from other sanctions. The United Kingdom had previously imposed sanctions on HTX and Sun Yam, suspected of being linked to the evasion of Russian sanctions, and the European Union had named the exchange in its measures against Russia two months later. However, the FCA case is separate from sanctions matters and focuses only on marketing and promotion to British consumers.