UK to ban airdrops next month. Is that a mistake?

We’ve all done it. Logged onto a wallet and found new or additional coins without needing to do anything.

Sometimes this is welcome. Sometimes it’s annoying. But as of a month from now if you are a UK based crypto company, it’ll be against the law.

The UK’s “Financial Conduct Authority” (FCA) is to prohibit the distribution of NFTs and Cryptocurrencies being used to promote investment. This brings Crypto inline with other high risk investments.

Now, I can see the intent here. And the FCA saying they want to

strike the right balance between protecting people and enabling sustainable innovation in the sector.

is encouraging.

However, I’m not sure what difference it will make in isolation. They aren’t banning the receipt of airdrops (how could they?) just the use of them as a marketing tool by UK firms.

As the lobbying group “Crypto UK” points out

aspects of the rules (such as incentive bans) may make it challenging for firms to be commercial and competitive and may cause the unintended consequence of forcing firms to move their operations out of the U.K.,

And that’s the problem isn’t it?

Nobody wants airdrops from scammers trying to access our wallets or invite us to a rugpull party. But we don’t mind the odd airdrop from BAT, MetaMask and (of course) moons. Bad actors will just claim to be based elsewhere and decent projects won’t be able to promote and reward.

Or am I missing something?