Hargreaves Lansdown, the UK’s largest retail investment platform with roughly £170 billion in assets under administration, is preparing to offer physically backed Bitcoin and Ethereum exchange-traded notes to its more than two million clients. The Financial Conduct Authority lifted its four-year ban on retail crypto ETNs on October 8, 2025. Despite offering these products, the platform has explicitly warned clients that bitcoin is not an asset class and that crypto has no intrinsic value. The ETNs will be classified as Restricted Mass Market Investments with an expected portfolio exposure cap of around 10%, without direct custody of digital assets. Within one month of the ban being lifted, the UK became the third-largest market for crypto ETNs in Europe.
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