Spain Pins X With €5M Fine After Illegal Crypto Ads Slip Through — A New Model for Europe?

Spain’s financial authority, the CNMV, has hit X with a €5 million fine for allowing unauthorized crypto promotions to run on its platform. The ads in question promoted Quantum AI, a company with no legal permission to offer investment services in Spain.

Under Spanish law, this failure is not a minor oversight—it’s a “very serious and continuous breach,” marking one of the toughest enforcement actions ever taken in Europe against a major social platform for crypto advertising violations.

What makes this case especially significant is Spain’s strict legal framework. Since March 2023, every online platform—large or small—is legally obligated to screen financial and crypto-related ads, verify whether the advertiser is licensed, and check national and international blacklists before allowing any promotion to go live. X didn’t do that. And Spain is making sure the rest of Europe takes note.

The investigation into X began in November 2023. Regulators found that the platform had not verified whether Quantum AI appeared on the CNMV’s warning lists or on foreign regulatory blacklists. Rodrigo Buenaventura, the CNMV’s former president, stressed that platforms must ensure all financial service advertisers are authorized—and that failing to do so exposes investors to significant harm. In Spain, this responsibility is not optional; it is enshrined in law.

Despite X reporting rising global ad revenues—up 17.5% in the U.S. and 16.5% internationally—the ruling highlights a glaring weakness: the platform’s transparency around crypto advertisers remains limited. According to the CNMV, X simply did not carry out its legally required checks before broadcasting the Quantum AI ads.

The case lays bare the tension between X’s ad-driven business model and its regulatory duty of care. And for users, it serves as a stark reminder that a seemingly harmless promoted post may actually be a well-packaged crypto scam.

Spain has become a pioneer in holding platforms accountable for the financial content they host. Since 2022, the CNMV has ramped up its enforcement against crypto fraud, culminating in the 2023 rules that force digital platforms to actively filter crypto ads.

Even giants like X are treated no differently: if a platform broadcasts unauthorized crypto promotions, the platform itself is responsible. Spain’s message is clear—whether the ad promotes Bitcoin, an altcoin, or a suspicious token from an unknown operator, the platform must verify its legitimacy.

On a broader level, Europe is also tightening its stance. Initiatives like the Digital Services Act aim to extend Spain’s level of vigilance across all member states, potentially ushering in a new era where social networks must take far greater responsibility for financial content. For users, this could mean fewer sketchy sponsored ads and a safer digital environment.

In the end, X now faces a €5 million penalty for failing to comply with Spain’s stringent crypto advertising laws. Even with its post–xAI merger valuation of $33 billion, the company is learning that Europe—starting with Spain—is no longer willing to tolerate crypto promotion without oversight. And as other countries watch the fallout, Spain’s framework may well become the regulatory template for a more secure digital-asset landscape across the continent.

Europe once expected a sweeping wave of central bank digital currencies—but instead, it is the crypto ecosystem that has moved faster, reshaping digital finance through decentralization and sheer network momentum. Faced with this widening gap between crypto innovation and institutional caution, governments across the continent are tightening their regulatory grip. And nowhere is that clampdown more visible than in Spain, where social network X (formerly Twitter) has just learned how costly non-compliance can be.