The UK’s Financial Promotions regime is killing stablecoins: The UK keeps saying it wants to lead in crypto and fintech, but its “Financial Promotions” regime is doing the opposite. The name sounds like something about advertising, but, in reality, it has very little to do with adverts and a lot to do with making basic digital money products very difficult to use for UK users. It was meant to stop misleading crypto ads on the tube, but instead it now treats every crypto asset the same, including stablecoins, which are designed to behave like digital pounds or dollars, as if they’re all volatile tokens. That view is out of date and fails to recognise how stablecoins actually work or how essential they’re becoming for payments, settlement and everyday finance. Because of this one-size-fits-all framework, building stablecoin products for UK users has become needlessly difficult. Long questionnaires, mandatory 24-hour cooldown periods and constant friction before a user can do something as simple as topping up a balance. This creates a slow, awkward experience for something that should feel as straightforward as using any modern fintech app. It also makes it far harder and more expensive for UK builders to offer transparent, compliant and world-class stablecoin products with embedded DeFi. Instead of encouraging innovation, the regime actively punishes it. The result is predictable. Users drift toward overseas products, founders hesitate to build in the UK and the UK loses ground in a field where it could genuinely lead. The Financial Promotions regime doesn’t just need minor adjustments. It needs a complete reform, or scrapping altogether, in favour of a modern, innovation-friendly approach that understands the difference between speculative trading and essential digital financial infrastructure. If the UK truly wants to lead in the future of finance, it has to stop holding that future back. And I encourage the entire industry to come together and push for a more sensible, innovation-friendly approach before even more talent and progress move elsewhere. The time to act is now until its too late.