The FCA has issued a warning about a crypto project based on Solana that also has its own memecoin.
The warning from the British financial authority expresses concerns regarding unauthorized promotions and financial activities aimed at UK consumers.
The warning from FCA towards the memecoin on Solana
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) of the United Kingdom of Great Britain is the public regulatory body for the financial markets of the UK. Its objective is to protect consumers, competition, and financial markets, and it does so by regulating financial companies that provide services to consumers and maintaining the integrity of the financial markets in the United Kingdom.
In particular, it focuses specifically on the regulation of the conduct of companies that offer financial services.
It is therefore also the public body that has the power to intervene in the crypto markets in the UK, so the notice it has issued cannot be ignored.
This warning refers to Retardio, defined by the FCA as a company that might provide or promote financial services or products without the necessary authorizations.
The notice then explicitly states:
“You should avoid dealing with this company and be careful of scams”.
The problem
The problem raised by FCA concerns only the formal compliance with the laws. However, between the lines of the notice, one can detect quite different suspicions.
In fact, the notice explicitly states only that (almost) all companies and individuals must be authorized by the same FCA if they want to carry out or promote financial services in the United Kingdom.
Well, the problem is that Retardio is not authorized, and since it might target people residing in the United Kingdom, the FCA had to issue this warning against them.
Since Retardio might provide or promote financial services or products, the absence of the necessary authorizations means that it effectively risks providing financial services to the British unlawfully.
FCA: the doubts about the reliability of the memecoin project on Solana
But in reality, there is more.
The official FCA warning also reveals that some companies providing financial products or services without authorization may provide incorrect contact details, and they may change these contact details over time. They also add that such companies might even provide data belonging to other companies or individuals, thus making information that is not authentic appear genuine.
The notice also contains a paragraph titled “How to protect yourself” in which the FCA warns that one should only deal with authorized financial companies, because if a financial company is authorized, it offers greater protections if things go bull.
In fact, they add that those dealing with Retardio do not have access to the Financial Ombudsman Service if they want to file a complaint, and are not protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) if things go bull.
The FCA states it explicitly:
“This means that it is unlikely you will get your money back if the company fails”.
Although all this is technically related only to the fact of providing financial products and services in the UK without the necessary authorizations, between the lines of this notice perhaps some additional doubt can be read.
In this regard, most likely not by chance, the notice concludes with a link to another page of the official FCA website where they explicitly explain how to protect oneself from scams.
The memecoin on Solana
The Retardio project has put up for sale a collection of NFTs based on Solana that has already reached 31 million dollars in sales.
It also has its own associated memecoin with the same name, traded mainly on the DEX Raydium, still on Solana.
This memecoin debuted in March at a price slightly below 18 thousandths of a dollar, and until June its price performance was substantially negative, albeit slightly.
Starting from July, however, it experienced a real boom.
It recorded two almost parabolic rises, one in July that brought the price to 120 thousandths of a dollar, and a second between September and November that brought it to the current all-time high of 242 thousandths of a dollar reached on November 7.
At that point, the bull run of the crypto markets had just begun and is still ongoing, and during the mini-altseason at the end of November, the price of the Retardio token fell to below 80 thousandths of a dollar.
The current price is not only 63% lower than the highs of last month, but it is also lower compared to the highs of July.
The burst of the bolla
The one in July turned out to be a speculative bubble. However, it should be defined only as a mini-bubble, because after it burst, the price of the Retardio token barely fell below 30 thousandths of a dollar, whereas it had started to inflate around 24 thousandths.
Therefore, after the burst of the mini-bolla speculativa in July, the price in the following months still remained above the starting levels, as usually happens with mini-bolle.
That mini-bolla took less than a month to inflate, and about a month and a half to deflate.
Even the one in October seems to be a mini-bubble.
It started to inflate at 36 thousandths of a dollar, and it inflated by 500% in about a month and a half.
Now it has been more than a month since it started to deflate, but it has not yet brought the price back to the starting levels.
In this regard, two hypotheses can be made.
The first is that this time it might take more before it deflates.
The second, however, is that the bull run crypto currently underway could prevent the price of the Retardio token from returning to those 36 thousandths of a dollar from mid-September.