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FIND OUT MORESenior Associate Tom Crawford comments on the FCA's Market Abuse Regime for Cryptoassets (MARC), and the challenges firms will face in establishing effective market abuse controls, including defining inside information and determining the scope of surveillance obligations. Tom’s comments were published in Global Relay Intelligence & Practice, 14 September 2026, and can be found here.
What does a market abuse compliance program in the context of a crypto trading platform involve?
"In short: everything a traditional exchange has to do, plus a set of crypto-specific challenges that don't have many off-the-shelf solutions yet. Platforms need surveillance systems that can detect market abuse, but across a market that runs 24/7, spans hundreds of venues, and moves in ways that traditional market surveillance tools may not catch. They need insider lists, information barriers, whistleblowing channels, and the ability to suspend users and halt trading when abuse is detected. Under the new regime, appropriate internal procedures for employees to report infringements (and potential infringements) must be in place, making crypto trading platforms frontline enforcers of market integrity. If your systems aren't up to it, the firm faces regulatory exposure and possible FCA enforcement action."
Any key challenges that firms are currently grappling with?
"The biggest challenge is that firms are being asked to build compliance programmes to a standard that doesn't yet have a clear, settled benchmark. The new regime applies from day one (25 October 2027). It will be a significant challenge for firms to define inside information. It is not clear how far surveillance obligations should extend when manipulation can be orchestrated across unregulated offshore exchanges and platforms simultaneously. Even the FCA acknowledges that "designing an effective cryptoasset regime is not straightforward, particularly when compared with traditional financial markets", yet the regulatory exposure for getting it wrong is the same. Firms are effectively building the plane while flying it, and those that treat this as a cookie cutter paper exercise rather than a genuine operational concern risk being the first enforcement examples when the regime goes live."
