Crypto: This British Giant Once Advised Against Bitcoin—Now It Sells It to 2 Million Clients

Hargreaves Lansdown only recently advised retail investors against betting on Bitcoin. Less than a year later, the UK’s largest retail investment platform is opening access to nine Bitcoin and Ether ETNs. BlackRock, Bitwise, CoinShares, WisdomTree, 21Shares and Invesco are among the selected providers. The messaging remains cautious. The product, however, is now on the shelves.

Crypto: Nine ETNs Arrive at Hargreaves Lansdown

Two million clients can now gain exposure to Bitcoin or Ether without opening an account on an exchange.

The move echoes Bitcoin’s striking integration into traditional finance through BlackRock’s IBIT. At Hargreaves Lansdown, investors remain within their familiar environment: an investment account, a traditional interface and a regulated product.

The nine ETNs on offer charge annual fees ranging from 0% to 0.35%. They come from major asset managers, including BlackRock’s iShares.

A crypto ETN does not give investors bitcoins directly. It is a financial security designed to track the price of a digital asset. There is no private key or seed phrase to manage.

Hargreaves Lansdown manages more than $200 billion in assets and serves around two million investors. Its arrival therefore provides access to crypto through one of the main gateways to UK savings.

London Opened the Door

This reversal would have been impossible under the old rules.

Since 2021, the Financial Conduct Authority had barred UK retail investors from accessing crypto ETNs. It lifted the ban on October 8, 2025, saying these products had become more common and better understood.

The FCA nevertheless specifies that they remain classified as investments carrying a significant level of risk.

Hargreaves Lansdown is therefore imposing several safeguards. New buyers must pass an assessment designed to verify that they understand the product. A 24-hour waiting period then applies before the first investment.

The products are not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme in the event of a problem.

London is opening its crypto market while simultaneously tightening oversight. The UK tax authority already has far more precise data on the gains made by its crypto investors.

Openness and oversight are advancing together.

Hargreaves Remains Skeptical, However

The platform’s own position is the most interesting aspect.

Hargreaves Lansdown continues to maintain that Bitcoin is not a genuine asset class and, in its view, lacks the intrinsic characteristics needed to serve as a solid foundation for achieving growth or income goals.

It also emphasizes the extreme losses already observed in BTC.

And yet it now distributes Bitcoin products.

This is not necessarily a commercial contradiction. It is also a sign that crypto has reached a scale that major financial intermediaries can hardly ignore. A platform can view Bitcoin as highly speculative while believing that its clients should be able to access it in a regulated environment.

BlackRock is already an example of this normalization: its IBIT Bitcoin ETF manages around $60 billion and has posted a slightly better performance than the Vanguard S&P 500 since 2024.

Hargreaves Lansdown has not therefore become pro-Bitcoin. That is almost more revealing. Crypto is now entering the product shelves of firms that continue to openly regard it with caution.