At the peak of its popularity, Pump.fun is facing more scrutiny and questions on its risk profile. Reports are emerging of UK users seeing a restriction screen, as a centralized protection against using the high-volatility launch and trading platform.
Pump.fun access is showing a restriction screen for users in the United Kingdom. The new restriction follows the recent shutdown of the live-streaming feature, where some of the streams escaped moderation.
The restriction originates with the site itself but follows a warning from the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority. According to the FCA, the firm provides unauthorized financial services and users should refrain from using it.
There is no outright ban on trading meme tokens, but the FCA warns traders are not covered by the UK Financial Ombudsman authority. There are currently no other sanctions against Pump.fun or token traders or creators. Around 9% of the site’s traffic comes from the UK, with more than 30% from the leading market, the USA.
The token launch platform faced the restriction also in relation to its extreme risk. Reports of the ban arrived after podcaster Hailey Welch rug-pulled her own HAWK token for $50M.
Whatever the final reason, Pump.fun is now posting a ‘restricted jurisdiction’ notice for anyone attempting to connect from the UK. Potential token traders found a workaround for the connection validity test, bypassing the restriction.
Pump.fun itself has no stated office location or jurisdiction. The protocol is merely software communicating with the Solana network, offering a basic safeguard against rug pulls by locking up initial liquidity. Despite this, tokens remain risky, as developers can still own a share of the supply and sell it quickly, creating a big loss for all other buyers.
Pump.fun has not included the UK in its restricted list
For now, Pump.fun has not altered its terms and conditions, and the UK is featured as one of the regulated and permitted crypto markets. The conditions in fact take into account UK regulations for other countries and territories.
Pump.fun retains a restriction risk that is shared by other crypto platforms. The official list of prohibited countries includes Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Russia.
The restriction follows the limitation for Polymarket in France after the app became notorious for its large-scale payouts for bets on the US election results.
In the case of Pump.fun, an actual ban has not been passed by UK authorities. Reddit supporters of Solana showed relief about the restriction, suggesting the site may have to be banned by state authorities. For now, the Pump.fun team has decided on self-restricting by excluding users as much as possible, though the site is not restricting VPN usage or restriction bypassing. Pump.fun is also fully a non-KYC site, with no way to check user identities.
Pump.fun trading slows down
The meme token season from the past three months is coming down from its stage of endless expansion. The market for new risky tokens peaked in late November. Enthusiasm for memes cooled down a notch after Pump.fun stopped its live-streaming feature, due to being unable to moderate all content.
The site already peaked in its number of daily new tokens. During the most active trading days, more than 261K active wallets joined the trading, with a small fraction acting as token creators. Pump.fun daily revenues peaked at $5.3M as of November 24, the high water mark for the meme cycle. Fees have since fallen to $1.5M daily, as all other metrics are also shifting.
The last few weeks contained multiple new trends and rug pulls, including the QUANT token trend, where a 13-year-old creator launched and rug-pulled his own tokens. Even without those dramatic events, Pump.fun tokens usually fail and remain stuck in more than 98% of all launches.
However, some tokens make it big, as in the case of Moodeng (MOODENG), which gained a listing on Coinbase as one of the few shortlisted memes.
Pump.fun also set the example for other similar platforms, such as SunPump on TRON, or the recently launched SpringBoard by PancakeSwap.
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