FCA Opens Crypto Authorisation and Sets a 28 February Deadline

The Financial Conduct Authority began taking applications for its cryptoasset regime on Wednesday. Firms have until 28 February 2027 to file, and the rules take effect on 25 October 2027. Trading platforms, dealers, arrangers, custodians, staking services, lenders and stablecoin issuers all need the permission, on the fullest list published, which Securities.io and FinanceFeeds both carry. A firm already sitting on the regulator's money-laundering register does not carry over. Nothing converts automatically, and the FCA said so in those terms.

Two provisions, and only one of them is useful

The gateway turns on a distinction between two arrangements with similar names and opposite effects. A firm that applies before the February cut-off falls under the saving provision, which lets it keep providing specified cryptoasset services, new business included, while the FCA works through its file. A firm that applies late, or not at all, lands in the statutory transitional provision instead. That one permits the servicing of contracts already signed and nothing else: no new customers, no new agreements, and a wind-down of UK cryptoasset business before the regime starts. The FCA's own gateway note sets out both in that order, and FinanceFeeds read them the same way in early September.

The old register is what firms are most likely to misread. Registration under the money-laundering rules is an anti-money-laundering check, not a conduct authorisation under the Financial Services and Markets Act. Cointelegraph quotes the regulator directly: firms on that register "should note that there will be no automatic conversion".

One quote, two versions

Dominic Cashman, the FCA's director of authorisation, gave the regime one sentence in the regulator's own release on Wednesday. Crowdfund Insider and Securities.io reproduce it word for word.

"The UK's new crypto regime will give consumers greater protections and firms a clear framework to operate in," Cashman said.

Cryptopolitan, writing the same day, attributes different wording to the same official: that the opening gives firms clarity and legitimacy, along with consumer protections that did not exist before now. That phrasing is not in the release. We could not establish where it came from, and it is not used here as his words. FinanceFeeds is also alone in giving the gateway an opening hour of 9:00 a.m.; the FCA's material gives the date only.

The record on the register being replaced

Neither the FCA nor any outlet read here has forecast how many firms will file, or how many will clear the bar. The only guide published on Wednesday is the history of the register the new regime supersedes, and it comes from a single source. Cryptopolitan counts four approvals out of 35 applications in March 2024 and, as of August this year, 263 withdrawals among 391 completed cases, with roughly 17% ending in registration. Its figure for the last twelve months is 13 approvals from 23 rulings. No other account in this sweep repeats any of it.

Those numbers come from the narrower test. Full authorisation asks for more, and the FCA has published what it expects a file to contain. FinanceFeeds describes a 68-page information document covering governance, financial resources, a regulatory business plan, forecasts and an IT assessment; no other account read here names it.

Five months, and then a count

Europe ran a version of this on a shorter fuse. Cryptopolitan puts the result at 213 licensed entities across 23 jurisdictions once the European transitional window closed on 1 July, with 16 MiCA licences among the hundred largest exchanges by volume; that tally stands on one outlet. Binance stopped serving EU users when that window shut, the outcome the saving provision exists to prevent here.

What has not been published is the cost. No account read here gives an application fee, and the FCA's release does not mention one. Securities.io alone reports that the prudential settings moved before the gateway opened, cutting the stablecoin coefficient from 2% to 1%. The final rules behind all of it were published in June. The first honest measure is the count on 1 March, and whether the list of firms willing to file is longer or shorter than the register it replaces.