The United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) issued a warning about the Solana-based “Retardio” project, citing concerns over unauthorized financial promotions and activities targeting UK consumers.
On Dec. 16, the FCA posted a warning against the Retardio project, saying that the token may be providing or promoting financial services without the regulator’s permission.
The watchdog reminded consumers to deal only with FCA-approved firms to ensure adequate protection.
The Retardio project features a Solana-based non-fungible token (NFT) collection that has reportedly achieved $31 million in lifetime sales, according to CryptoSlam. Its associated memecoin, trading under the ticker “Retardio,” is valued at around $0.08 with a market capitalization of about $87 million, as per Dexscreener.
Retardio project claps back at the FCA
According to the FCA, UK-based users who deal with the Retardio project will not have access to the Financial Ombudsman Service, which settles complaints between consumers and financial services businesses.
The regulator also noted that consumers would not be protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), a service that protects consumers when financial firms go out of business. “This means it’s unlikely you’d get your money back if the firm goes out of business,” the FCA wrote.
The FCA urged citizens to deal with authorized firms. The regulator said authorized firms give greater protection to consumers when things go wrong. The financial services regulator also said that users can check their registry to ensure that the company they are dealing with is authorized in the UK.
The government agency also told consumers to report unauthorized firms by contacting their official channels.
The memecoin and NFT project humorously responded to the FCA, saying it had “issued a warning against the UK’s financial regulator.”
Related: FCA releases discussion paper on crypto market transparency, abuse
Memecoins represent the value of attention
In an interview with Cointelegraph, Animoca Brands Chairman Yat Siu said memecoins capture the value of user attention, unlike traditional metrics on social platforms. He added that while attention on social platforms does not transparently show the value of user-generated content (UGC), memecoins work differently.
Siu said that in Web3, UGC culture is embedded into memecoins, with their market capitalization reflecting the value of the attention they gain. “If attention was a token, that’s basically what memecoins represent. And so I think of it as correlated between them,” he said.
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