Indonesia is putting its crypto "finfluencers" on notice. The country's Financial Services Authority has issued a regulation requiring social-media influencers who recommend crypto and other digital financial assets to be certified before they post — and to come clean about who is paying them.
What the rule requires
The regulator, known by its Indonesian initials OJK (Otoritas Jasa Keuangan), issued the measure — POJK No. 6 of 2026 — on June 24, according to DealStreetAsia and Cointelegraph. Influencers who recommend digital assets must hold a competency certification unless they already carry an equivalent professional license, and must disclose any paid promotion or economic interest in what they promote.
The rule also confines such promotion to the regulated system: influencers may only recommend assets available on authorized exchanges, the firms they promote must be OJK-licensed, and campaigns must run through those licensed providers' official channels — making informal, freelance shilling much harder. OJK can order violators to take down content and ask Indonesia's communications ministry to block offending accounts.
Who regulates crypto in Indonesia
Crypto oversight in Indonesia recently shifted to OJK, the country's consolidated financial watchdog, from Bappebti, the commodity-futures regulator that had treated crypto as a tradable commodity. The move brought digital assets under the same conduct rules as conventional financial products — and gave OJK the authority to set requirements like this one.
Why Indonesia is acting
Indonesia has one of the world's deepest retail crypto markets. It ranked third globally in Chainalysis's 2024 crypto adoption index and first in retail decentralized-finance activity — a large, broadly distributed base of small investors who are prime targets for misleading promotion. Regulators worldwide have documented a recurring pattern in which influencers, paid by token issuers, hype an asset to followers without disclosing the conflict, inflating the price before insiders sell — the "pump-and-dump" dynamic that cheap, mass-reach social media makes easy.
A global pattern
Indonesia's move fits a broader international tightening. Australia's securities regulator warned in 2022 that influencers may need a financial-services license when their content amounts to advice. Britain's Financial Conduct Authority said in 2024 that unauthorized promotion of regulated financial products can be a criminal offense, and in 2025 it coordinated an international operation with regulators in several countries that targeted hundreds of social-media accounts and dozens of websites run by unauthorized finfluencers. The Philippines adopted its own crypto-marketing restrictions in 2025.
What it means
For Indonesia's large influencer economy, which overlaps heavily with crypto promotion in a young, mobile-first population, the rule sets a compliance bar that casual promoters may struggle to clear — and shifts legal responsibility onto the licensed firms that engage them. It will not end crypto marketing, but it is designed to make it traceable and accountable, and to give OJK a lever to bar bad actors. OJK did not specify penalties or a grace period in its announcement, leaving open how aggressively, and how soon, the rule will bite.
