HTX Gives Court Undertakings and Drops Out of the UK Market

HTX gave undertakings to the High Court in London that it will not promote cryptoasset services to British consumers in breach of UK law, and the Financial Conduct Authority published the agreement on Thursday. The exchange, formerly Huobi, is no longer active in the UK. Deposits are shut. New British users cannot sign up. The regulator started the case a year ago, in October 2025, over what it describes as repeated failures to engage with it. Settlement terms are confidential, and the agreement carries no admission of liability by Huobi Global or anyone else.

What HTX has promised not to do

A financial promotion, in UK law, is an invitation or inducement to engage in investment activity, and section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 makes communicating one without authorisation an offence. The undertakings bind HTX not to communicate such a promotion, or cause one to be communicated, across its website, its apps and its social media. A second limb reaches past advertising. HTX will not target, solicit or actively seek to engage UK consumers at all. The FCA names Huobi Global S.A. as the first defendant and dates the court order 27 October, made by Deputy Master Holden, with proceedings issued on 21 October 2025 in the Business and Property Division. Those procedural details sit in the regulator's release and nowhere else read here.

"Crypto firms should be under no illusion: being based overseas does not put them beyond the reach of UK law," Steve Smart, the FCA's executive director of enforcement and market oversight, said.

Two accounts of what February was

The FCA release says the regulator announced its enforcement action publicly on 10 February 2026. A Reuters report carried by Global Banking and Finance Review at 10:26 UTC on Thursday puts a different event in that month: a High Court decision allowing the FCA to serve proceedings internationally. Those are not the same thing, neither account mentions the other, and nothing read here reconciles them. The Reuters copy carries two further details no other account repeats. It says the FCA placed HTX on its public list of firms operating without authorisation and asked for the exchange's apps to be pulled from UK app stores, and it notes that Justin Sun took a controlling stake in HTX in 2022.

Three dates on one page

The release itself is not tidy about when it appeared. The page is dated Thursday 29 October and marked last updated the same day, while its own metadata gives a published time of 26 October. The court order it describes is dated 27 October. None of the three is wrong on its face, and the FCA does not explain the sequence. The substance of the undertakings does not move either way. It is a gap worth logging rather than guessing at.

What UK account holders are left with

No account read here gives a figure for how many UK customers HTX had, and no penalty appears anywhere in the release. Holders of residual balances are pointed to the exchange's own published information on withdrawing them, which the regulator does not summarise and which carries no deadline in anything read here. Financial promotion rules and anti-money-laundering obligations remain the only parts of UK cryptoasset activity currently covered, and they run until October 2027 while a broader regime is built. Ireland fined Coinbase's e-money arm 3.25 million euros over safeguarding gaps last week, and Binance spent this week filing for a Brazilian licence against a deadline. Two firms chose the paperwork. HTX chose the exit, and no statement of its own has surfaced.