Pump.fun is run by Baton Corporation Ltd, a private company registered with the UK's Companies House under number 14743013, whose founders Alon Cohen, Dylan Kerler, and Noah Tweedale control the website and its rules while the wallet and coins you hold stay outside their reach.
That split is the entire answer to who is in charge. The company named in Pump.fun's own terms of service sets the fees and the rules, and it decides whether the site stays online, while your coins sit on the Solana blockchain under an address the company says is beyond its reach. Ownership of the business and custody of your money are two different things here, which is why understanding how the launchpad itself works matters before you trust it with funds.
The company that runs Pump.fun: Baton Corporation Ltd
Baton Corporation Ltd is a private limited company incorporated in England on March 20, 2023 and listed on the UK's public register, Companies House, under number 14743013. Its own terms of service name it, alongside a related entity called Bracket Ltd., as the business responsible for running the platform and the services on it.
Companies House, the UK's official register of businesses, lists Baton Corporation Ltd as active, formed as a private limited company, with a registered office at 82a James Carter Road in Mildenhall, England (source: Companies House). Its recorded business activity is retail sale over the internet, and four officers have been appointed, one of whom has since resigned.
The people behind the company are publicly named. The platform launched on January 19, 2024, and public filings identify its founders as a trio of English entrepreneurs (source: Wikipedia). All three founders appear as directors on the Companies House record, which means they carry the legal duties that come with running a registered company. One earlier director, Adrian Konstantinov, is listed as having resigned.
One detail matters for anyone reading the fine print. Although the company sits on a UK register, Pump.fun's terms of service are governed by the law of the British Virgin Islands, and disputes are pushed into private arbitration there. So the operator is a UK-registered business, but the contract you agree to when you use the site points to a different legal home.
What the company can switch off
The company that runs Pump.fun keeps broad power over the service you reach. Its terms of service reserve the right to change, suspend, restrict, or discontinue any part of the platform at any time, for any reason, and with immediate effect. In December 2024 it used that power against an entire country, cutting off users in the United Kingdom.
This is the part of the ownership picture that surprises people who assume a blockchain app is impossible to turn off. The front end you use, the pump.fun website and app, is ordinary software owned and operated by the company. It can add or remove features, block accounts, refuse transactions, and shut the interface entirely, and its terms spell out exactly these rights.
The clearest example came within days of regulatory pressure. After the UK's financial regulator published a warning about the platform on December 3, 2024, the company updated its terms on December 6, 2024 to exclude British users, and visitors from the UK saw a notice that access had been withdrawn (source: CryptoSlate). The Solana blockchain itself stayed the same. What changed was the company's decision about who it would let through the door.
For a trader, the practical lesson is that access to Pump.fun is a permission the company grants and can revoke. The coins may live on a public chain, but the convenient path you use to reach them and trade runs through a private company that can narrow or close it whenever it decides to, and it has shown it will, which is why the actions regulators have taken against the platform are worth following closely.
Do you actually own your Pump.fun wallet and coins?
Yes, in the sense that matters most: your coins sit on the Solana blockchain in a wallet the company says is beyond its control. Pump.fun's terms state that the wallet you get is provided by a separate firm, Privy, and that Pump is unable to control it or the private keys behind it.
Custody points the opposite way from control. When you sign in and receive a wallet, that wallet is created and managed by Privy, an embedded-wallet provider. Pump.fun's terms of service are explicit that the Pump entities and their affiliates are unable to control your wallet or the private keys to it (source: Pump.fun Terms). The company is powerless to freeze your balance or spend your coins.
That is genuinely different from a custodial exchange, where the platform holds your assets and can freeze or seize them. It is also why a self-custodial launchpad skips the kind of proof of reserves a custodial venue is expected to publish, because customer float is absent from its books.
The catch is that self-custody moves the risk onto you. If you lose access to the login or skip exporting your key, recovering a mistake is impossible, and coins sent to a scam are gone. The details of which key you hold and how access actually disappears are worth reading in full, and they are covered separately in the guide on how Pump.fun wallet custody works.
The UK's financial regulator lists Pump.fun as unauthorized
The UK's Financial Conduct Authority added Pump.fun to its warning list on December 3, 2024, stating the firm may be providing or promoting financial services or products lacking its permission and telling consumers to avoid dealing with it. The warning remains published and in force.
The Financial Conduct Authority, or FCA, is the UK's financial regulator, and its warning list is where it names firms it believes are operating outside the authorization UK law requires. Its notice for Pump.fun is blunt: the firm is unauthorized by the FCA and may be targeting people in the UK (source: FCA). The notice was first published on December 3, 2024, and it remains live, which is why the company moved to block UK users rather than seek approval.
An FCA warning falls short of a criminal charge or a court ruling. It is a formal signal that a business has skipped registering for the permissions the regulator expects, and that UK consumers dealing with it fall outside the protections that come with an authorized firm, such as access to the Financial Ombudsman or a compensation scheme.
For a reader outside the UK, the warning still carries weight. It tells you how at least one major regulator views the platform, and it shows that the company will change who it serves in response to regulatory pressure rather than contest it. A firm that quietly exits a market it is barred from serving legally is telling you something about how it weighs compliance against growth.
Where the PUMP token trades
Separate from the memecoins minted on the site, the company issued its own platform token, PUMP, which gives traders a way to take a view on the business itself rather than the individual coins launched on it. That token trades on BloFin, where the PUMP/USDT Spot market holds it directly and the PUMPUSDT Perpetual tracks the same price through a contract.
What a PUMP position costs in trading fees is set out on BloFin's fee schedule, worth a look before you size one.
What Pump.fun's ownership setup means for you
A private UK-registered company controls the interface and the rules and can cut off access, while the Solana blockchain holds your coins in a wallet even that company is unable to reach. Your main risks are losing access to the app and losing your own keys, more than the company running off with your balance.
The ownership structure creates a specific risk profile, and it differs from the one most people worry about. Because the company holds none of your coins, a hack of the company leaves your balance untouched, and it is unable to freeze your account the way a custodial platform can. The failure modes that remain are yours to manage: a lost or blocked login, an unexported key, a bad transaction, or a market that collapses to zero.
A short comparison makes the split concrete:
| Question | Pump.fun | Custodial exchange |
|---|---|---|
| Holds your coins? | You | The platform |
| Can freeze funds? | No | Yes |
| Can block access? | Yes | Yes |
| Recovers a lost key? | Only you | Platform can |
The difference that matters to a trader is where the keys sit. An exchange that custodies assets can be asked to prove its reserves and can help restore access, while a non-custodial launchpad holds none of your coins, so the risk moves from the platform's solvency to your own key management. Both models carry their own risks; they fail in different ways, and knowing which one you are using tells you which mistakes will actually cost you.
Looking to trade PUMP? To get started, you'll need to first create a BloFin account, fund your account with cryptocurrency, and navigate to the PUMP/USDT Spot trading page or PUMPUSDT Perpetual page.
Frequently asked questions
Is Pump.fun decentralized or run by a company?
Both descriptions apply to different layers. Trades and tokens settle on the Solana blockchain, which stays outside any single company's control, so the money layer is decentralized. The website and app you use to reach it are the opposite: they are software owned and operated by Baton Corporation Ltd, a registered company that writes the rules and can restrict who gets in. Pump.fun is best understood as a centralized company running a front end onto a public blockchain, more like a private business than a community-run protocol or a DAO.
Does Pump.fun own the coins created on the platform?
The memecoins launched through Pump.fun are created by users and live on Solana, and the company owns none of the tokens themselves or the money in your wallet. What the company owns and runs is the launch mechanism and the trading interface behind it, and it earns fees from that activity. Owning the tool that mints and trades a coin differs from owning the coin, which is why a token can keep trading even when its creator walks away.
Can I use Pump.fun in the United States?
Access depends on where you are and can change with little notice. Pump.fun's terms bar users in sanctioned or high-risk jurisdictions, and the company has withdrawn from entire markets under regulatory pressure, as it did in the United Kingdom in December 2024. It stops short of publishing a simple list of allowed countries, and its legal status varies by region and remains contested in some places. Anyone should check the current terms of service for their own region rather than assume access is permitted.
What happens to my coins if Pump.fun shuts down?
Your coins would remain on the Solana blockchain, because the company holds none of them. If you control the wallet's private key, you keep your tokens and can move them through any Solana wallet, independent of the Pump.fun interface. The practical risk is liquidity and access rather than ownership: a token that only traded through Pump.fun's own venue could become hard to sell, and if you relied on the app's login and skipped exporting your key, reaching the wallet could get much harder. Controlling your key is what protects you either way.
Who are the founders of Pump.fun?
Public filings name three English entrepreneurs, Alon Cohen, Dylan Kerler, and Noah Tweedale, as the founders, and all three appear as directors on the Companies House record for Baton Corporation Ltd. The company was incorporated in England on March 20, 2023, and the platform launched on January 19, 2024. One earlier director, Adrian Konstantinov, is listed as having resigned. As directors, the founders carry the legal duties that come with running a registered company.
Researched and written by the BloFin Academy editorial team with AI-assisted drafting. Primary sources include Pump.fun's own terms of service and the UK Companies House record for Baton Corporation Ltd, cross-checked against the Financial Conduct Authority warning list. All facts independently verified against cited documentation current as of September 2026.
This article is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not financial, investment, trading, or legal advice. Regulatory status and corporate details can change; verify current company filings, terms of service, and regulator listings against their primary sources before acting. Memecoins are extremely high-risk and most lose all their value. Do your own research and never risk funds you cannot afford to lose.