DeFi Notebook is an educational reference. This page sets out what we will and will not accept as advertising, how we write about products that carry real financial risk, and how we label anything that earns us money. It applies to every page on the site.
We have written it in public deliberately. A policy nobody can read is not much of a policy.
DeFi Notebook is not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. We cannot approve financial promotions and we do not do so.
Nothing on this site is financial, investment, legal or tax advice, and nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any asset. Our Disclaimers and Risks page goes into this in more detail, and our Terms of Service sets out the rest.
If you want advice about your own situation, speak to someone authorised to give it. That is not us.
We would rather say this at the top than bury it in a footer.
Prices move fast and a long way, in both directions. Protocols fail. Smart contracts get exploited. Tokens go to zero and do not come back. There is no deposit protection scheme standing behind any of it, and if your funds are gone there is usually nobody to appeal to.
Read anything on this site with that in mind, including the parts that sound encouraging.
We accept affiliate arrangements for a narrow set of things: products that help you learn, or help you keep safe what you already have.
That is the whole list. If something does not fit one of those three, we do not carry it.
We do not carry, and will not carry:
There are two reasons, and either one on its own would be enough.
Crypto is volatile, and we do not want to guide readers down that path.
We are comfortable explaining how something works. We are not comfortable being the reason somebody put money into it. The moment we earn more when you deposit more, our interests and yours have quietly come apart, and no disclosure line at the bottom of a page really fixes that.
This is a choice, not a constraint. Even where a promotion would be perfectly lawful, it can still be the wrong thing for this site to run.
Promoting cryptoassets to UK consumers is regulated, and the rules are stricter than most people expect.
Qualifying cryptoassets are classed as Restricted Mass Market Investments. Under the FCA's rules in COBS 4.12A, a firm must not communicate or approve a promotion for one that offers a retail customer any monetary or non-monetary incentive. The FCA's own examples of a banned incentive include offering a bonus where a customer refers another person, which is precisely the shape of a standard exchange referral programme.
Separately, section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 makes it an offence to communicate an invitation to engage in investment activity in the course of business without authorisation or approval by an authorised firm. On indictment that carries up to two years imprisonment. It applies to publishers and affiliates, not only to the firms whose products are being promoted.
We are not interested in operating close to that line.
The same thinking applies to the articles, not just the adverts.
Explaining how a liquidity pool works, what impermanent loss is, or why an approval can drain a wallet is useful, and we will keep doing it. Framing the same material as a route to returns is not, so you should not find pages here telling you how to start earning yield.
Where we write about something risky, we describe how it works and what can go wrong, and we leave the decision with you. If you spot a page that reads more like encouragement than explanation, tell us, because we would consider that a bug.
We also do not sell coverage. Nobody can pay to be written about, to be reviewed more favourably, or to have criticism removed.
Where a link earns us a commission, we say so on the page carrying it, near the link rather than hidden at the bottom.
A commission never changes what we say about a product. It costs you nothing extra, and we would rather lose the commission than recommend something we would not use ourselves.
UK crypto regulation is mid-transition. The Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Cryptoassets) Regulations 2026 passed in February 2026, the FCA published final rules in June 2026, and the full authorisation regime is expected to come into force on 25 October 2027. More activities are being brought inside the regulatory perimeter as that happens, including custody and staking arrangements.
We will revisit this page as the rules land. Our starting position is that a wider perimeter makes us more cautious rather than less.
If you think we have got something wrong here, or you have spotted content on the site that does not match what this page promises, please get in touch. We would rather hear it.
Last reviewed: 18 August 2026.