The U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) reviewed 291 registration applications from cryptocurrency companies since the beginning of 2020, but only 13% of them were eventually authorized to operate in the country.
Representatives of the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published a response to a request submitted by an anonymous author under the Freedom of Information Act. The request’s author was interested in the registration statistics of companies working with digital assets.
In the reply, the British financial regulator published the requested data for the period from January 10, 2020 to August 2023:
- 291 cryptocurrency companies applied for registration to the FCA;
- 38 applications were approved;
- 5 applications were rejected due to non-compliance with the conditions for registration, in particular the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing, and Transfer of Funds Regulations (MLR);
- 22 applications were rejected due to insufficient information provided related to their cryptocurrency and financial technology activities;
- 155 applications were withdrawn by the applicants.
In almost three years, the FCA has approved only 13% of applications from cryptocurrency companies. Among the main reasons for withdrawing their petitions, representatives of crypto firms noted the inability to:
- provide the necessary information to the regulator;
- comply with the regulator’s requirements for working with cryptocurrencies;
- meet the MLR.
Some crypto companies withdrew their applications because they were certain that the FCA wouldn’t approve them. Cryptocurrency businesses in the U.K. have started to experience difficulties with access to banking services over the past few months.
As of today, the FCA lists 42 registered crypto-asset providers, including Skrill, eToro, and Gemini. This low concentration of crypto companies in the country is related to the fact that the British authorities have increased supervision of the cryptocurrency market as part of a program to counter economic crime, as shortcomings in the United Kingdom’s legal framework have made the country the largest “supplier” of fraudulent crypto companies.
