The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has granted cryptocurrency exchange Coinpass approval to operate as a crypto asset company.
According to Coinpass Chief Executive Jeff Hancock, Coinpass now stands among the first UK-based crypto exchanges to be fully registered with the FCA.
January 2021 saw the FCA become the anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing regulator for crypto asset businesses, resulting in crypto firms having to be registered with the financial watchdog before conducting business. The FCA has only registered six businesses up until recently, with many more under review. Because of a failure to satisfy anti-money laundering criteria, the number of abandoned registrations increased by a quarter in less than a month in June.
Companies that filed to register with the FCA before December 2020, on the other hand, are eligible for the Temporary Registrations Regimes (TRR). If approved, they would be able to continue trading while the FCA evaluates their registration. The FCA extended the TRR application deadline from July 9, 2021, to March 20, 2022 in June. There is a decrease in registrations as a result of applicants failing to satisfy required criteria.
On June 21, the FCA’s head of enforcement and market supervision, Mark Steward, claimed that “a number of firms are clearly doing business in the UK without being registered.” He then issued a warning against 111 unregistered crypto asset businesses, calling the situation “a very real risk.” The FCA had already established a precedent by being the first in a long line of financial authorities to issue a warning against Binance. As a result, the exchange’s activities in the country were halted.
The watchdog later stated that adequate monitoring of the exchange was presently not feasible owing to Binance’s lack of cooperation. This came after the FCA said that Binance declined to reply to “simple questions” posed by the FCA. While Binance did technically respond to questions, the responses “amounted to a refusal to supply information,” according to the FCA.