Britain's largest brokerage firm has no reason to reject Bitcoin

Hargreaves Lansdown launches nine bitcoin and Ethereum ETNs

The UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) lifted a four-year retail ban in October 2025, a move that caused trading volume of cryptocurrency ETNs in London to surge ninefold. However, the UK Revenue and Customs (HMRC) will ban the inclusion of these ETNs in stock and stock ISA accounts from April 2026.

On September 3, 2026, Hargreaves Lansdown began providing nine physically supported Bitcoin and Ethereum exchange-traded notes (ETNs) to its approximately 2 million UK customers. After FCA lifted its retail ban on these products in October 2025, the company held on longer than any other major UK platform. Issuers of the products listed this time include BlackRock's iShares, WisdomTree, 21Shares, Invesco, CoinShares and Bitwise, with annual rates ranging from 0% to 0.35%. The launch differs from competitor announcements not in the product mix, but in the fact that Hargreaves Lansdown is selling an asset that its own research department describes as "having no intrinsic value."

Wait eleven months to see competitors take the lead

In the weeks after the FCA made its decision in October 2025, Interactive Investor, AJ Bell and Aviva all added cryptocurrency ETN to their platforms. Hargreaves Lansdown followed up nearly a year later. Doug Abbott, the company's chief product officer, described the delay as deliberate rather than reluctant, saying the HL wanted to design "just the right amount of resistance" before opening the door-part of a broader trend by UK regulators to expand the scope of regulated digital finance since the FCA initially reversed policy. Today, this resistance has become a distinctive feature of the product. Customers must self-certify as senior investors and pass an online suitability test to see these ETNs. First-time buyers will have to wait another 24 hours before the platform executes the transaction. The notes are placed in the "advanced investment" category, alongside venture capital trusts, completely away from the standard trading screen, and are capped at 10% for cryptocurrency portfolios under FCA guidance.

Tax rules that no one likes in the cryptocurrency world

Prior to the release, it was widely believed in the industry that once the FCA cleared the way, these ETNs would be included in tax-exempt stock and stock ISA accounts. But HMRC ruled the opposite. Starting from April 2026, cryptocurrency ETN is explicitly prohibited from being included in stock and stock ISA accounts, and its eligibility is limited to the Innovative Financial ISA and standard fund and stock accounts. Self-invested personal pensions (SIPP) remain open to them. Cryptocurrency advocates say the ruling shifts demand away from the type of account that most UK savers actually use because innovative financial ISAs serve a smaller, diverse group of investors. The actual effect is to push cryptocurrency exposure into pension accounts and taxable positions, rather than the ISA channel that drives most of the HL's retail capital flow.

Actual storage location of ETN

Stocks and stock ISA: banned from April 2026
Innovative financial ISA: allow
Self-investment in personal pensions (SIPP): allow
Fund and stock accounts: allow

London trading volume slowly catches up with Frankfurt

Since the FCA reversed its policy, cryptocurrency ETN trading volume on the London Stock Exchange has reached US$1.5 billion, nine times the total for the previous 17 months. However, this growth still puts London far behind continental European exchanges. The average daily trading volume on the London Stock Exchange in August was about one-sixth of the trading volume on Deutsche Börse's Xetra platform. Including HL's customer base in this pool will have less impact on real-time trading volume than on coverage because HL controls the UK's largest pool of retail brokerage accounts. Suitability tests, cooling-off periods and exposure caps may keep growth gradual rather than sudden. In addition, the ETN structure eliminates the need for customers to directly manage private keys or wallets, which lowers the technical threshold relative to directly holding tokens, regardless of what the platform thinks about the asset itself.

Timeline

October 2025: FCA reverses four-year ban on retail cryptocurrency ETN
End of 2025: Interactive Investor, AJ Bell and Aviva list ETN within weeks
April 2026: HMRC excludes cryptocurrency ETN from stocks and stock ISA
June 2026: Bitcoin drops to US$58,000 after hitting an all-time high of US$126,000
September 3, 2026: Hargreaves Lansdown opens trading in nine cryptocurrencies ETNs

Tell two million customers: Don't buy what you're selling

Hargreaves Lansdown has not changed its public evaluation of Bitcoin to align with its product decisions. The company's own materials describe the asset as lacking intrinsic value, lacking growth and revenue metrics to judge traditional positions, and being unsuitable as a relying tool for clients to achieve financial goals. This view coexists with the product shelves built by BlackRock, WisdomTree and four other issuers, which are now accessible with just a click from the same account. Commentators of The Sovereign Ledger believe that the listing proves that mainstream wealth management in the UK can no longer ignore customer needs, rather than a change in the views of these platforms on the assets themselves. This distinction is worth keeping in mind: HL deliberately sets a threshold for products precisely because it does not want to be held responsible for what happens on the other side of the door in the future.

Bitcoin's trend over the past year partly explains this caution. The asset hit an all-time high of $126,000 before falling to $58,000 in June 2026. Since then, it has stabilized in the range of $77,000 to $78,000 driven by U.S. institutional buying and short squeeze. A customer base based on funds, stocks and pension contributions can now be exposed to such fluctuations just by passing an appropriateness test-and the resistance set by HL is the clearest signal of the company's true feelings about it.