pump.fun Shuts Down in UK After FCA Warning

After receiving a warning from the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), pump.fun has officially banned UK users from accessing its website.

On December 3, the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) issued a warning emphasizing that memecoin platform pump.fun is not licensed to operate in the UK and may be targeting users in the country.

Warning about pump.fun on the FCA website

The agency said:

"It is important to note that in the UK, companies providing services related to cryptocurrencies must register to operate under anti-money laundering regulations. If UK residents use pump.fun, they will not benefit from a number of important protections and will almost certainly lose money if something goes wrong."

Just two days after the FCA warning, pump.fun updated its terms of service, officially banning UK users from accessing the project's website.

JUST IN: 🇬🇧 UK restricts access to Pump․Fun pic.twitter.com/zMl5JDG1YU

— Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) December 6, 2024

According to the announcement, the UK is now considered a "restricted jurisdiction". The reason given is that pump.fun needs to comply with the country's legal regulations.

Anonymous pump.fun team member Alon confirmed that this was a voluntary decision by the platform, and that there was no pressure from the FCA to stop providing services to UK users, and affirmed that this "ban" is permanent.

In addition, pump.fun also noted that users in jurisdictions deemed high-risk or sanctioned by the UK, US, EU, and countries sanctioned by the United Nations will not be allowed to use the platform's services.

The list of countries currently banned from accessing pump.fun includes Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Russia, and the UK.

Pump.fun's move to "ban" UK users also clearly shows the strictness of the country's cryptocurrency management process. Previously, in 2020, the FCA required all companies operating in the cryptocurrency sector to be licensed before providing services to British citizens. However, out of a total of 347 applications, only 47 companies were approved by the FCA.

Despite the ban, many people have shared tips to "circumvent the law", bypassing the regulator such as using VPN to access the platform or unblocking pump.fun by interfering with the website's source code.

For the UK gang who want to rug on https://t.co/hvwQnX9NJF

Open developer tools, click network, search "valid", right click on the request, click "block" and refresh ur browser

thank me later fam pic.twitter.com/R3lPMD1pQe

— scott (@jshwifsolana) December 6, 2024

https://t.co/7JHhpfnyfl banned in the UK. Oh no degens how will you shitcoin now?

Bring in @Synk_ws $Synk offers a fully decentralized operating system in which you can connect to Firefox.

Built in VPN, no logs of your business so it’s fully private.

Have a look at $sol degens

— Wann0wfhc (@wann0wfhc) December 6, 2024

On the side of pump.fun, the memecoin issuance platform valued at 1.5 billion USD has received a lot of criticism about its legality and ethics throughout its operation.

Starting from promoting the memecoin pump-dump, to tolerating inappropriate behavior on its platform by not censoring content shared by users, many people have lost their favorable view of this project.

However, it cannot be denied that pump.fun has become a phenomenon thanks to the memecoin investment fever on Solana throughout 2024.

The attraction of pump.fun is so great that the daily revenue of this platform once surpassed Ethereum. In addition, when pump.fun gradually cooled down, transaction fees on Solana also dropped to the lowest level in half a year.

As of December 7, pump.fun has generated over $290 million since its launch, with pump.fun's 24-hour fee revenue regularly ranging from $2-5 million/day.