Late last week, the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority issued temporary licenses to applicant companies looking to become licensed crypto-asset firms. However, with the publication of this list of temporarily authorized firms has come a large amount of confusion for those that applied or were thinking of applying.
The deadline for companies to have acquired this license is Jan. 10, 2021. Under the current rules, companies that have a nexus within the U.K. and have failed to obtain the license before this date will no longer be able to deal in or manage crypto assets.
In order to meet that deadline, the FCA has told companies to submit their applications on or before July 31, 2020. The expectation was that this would give companies enough time to get through the process with the FCA.
The application procedure itself was similar to other FCA application types, such as claims management firms. There were enhanced questions around software, which were made easier for…