- The FCA has published guidance on which crypto activities will need its permission, ahead of an application window reported to open in September.
- Applying is not the same as being regulated. The regime itself is not expected to be fully in force until 2027.
- UK crypto marketing has already been regulated since October 2023, and a licence says nothing about whether a coin is worth holding.
The Financial Conduct Authority has set out which crypto activities will require its permission, with firms expected to be able to apply from September. What that does not do is change anything about the app on your phone this autumn, and the gap between those two things is the part worth understanding.
A licence application is a piece of paperwork, not a protection. If a platform you use applies in September, it then sits in a queue, and the rules it is applying to follow are not expected to be in force until 2027. Until then your account works the way it did last week.
And when authorisation does arrive, it governs how a firm handles your money and what it is allowed to tell you. It says nothing about whether the coins themselves hold their value. The regulator has been consistent on that distinction for years, and it is the one most readers collapse.
What authorisation actually requires
Authorisation is the FCA’s core permission, the same one a bank, a broker or an insurer holds. It comes with conditions attached: capital the firm has to keep on hand, rules on keeping client money separate from the company’s own, named senior people who are personally accountable when things go wrong, and reporting that never stops. Carrying on a regulated activity without it is a criminal offence.
The incoming regime pulls a set of crypto activities inside that fence. Draft legislation published by the Treasury in 2025 covers the things most people would recognise as a crypto business: running a trading platform, dealing in cryptoassets, arranging deals for other people, holding coins on a customer’s behalf, and issuing . A firm doing any of that for UK customers will need permission to continue.
One caveat on this piece. Our account of the new guidance comes from Cointelegraph’s write-up rather than the FCA’s own document, which we have not been able to read. Treat the specifics as reported rather than confirmed, and check the regulator’s own publications before acting on any of it. More of our coverage of UK rulemaking sits in Policy.
Applying in September, regulated in 2027
Authorisation is slow by design. Under the existing framework the FCA has up to six months to decide a complete application and up to twelve months for an incomplete one, and crypto firms will be submitting into a process nobody has run at this scale before. A September start date is the beginning of that, not the end.
There is a second consequence of the delay that gets less attention. Some firms will not apply at all, and some that do will be refused. Under the anti-money-laundering registration regime that has run since 2020, the FCA has approved only a small minority of the crypto firms that applied, with published figures putting the rate at roughly one in seven. If authorisation looks anything like that, a number of platforms UK customers use today will stop serving this country rather than clear the bar.
What that means for an ordinary holder is fairly mundane. A platform leaving the UK market usually gives notice and switches to withdrawal-only mode for a period, after which you either move your coins to another provider or into your own custody. It is an administrative headache rather than a loss, provided you notice the email.
The rules that already apply
It is easy to read this as the first time crypto has been regulated in the UK. It isn’t. Since 8 October 2023 the financial promotions regime has applied to any firm marketing cryptoassets to UK consumers, which brought in mandatory risk warnings, a 24-hour cooling-off period for first-time investors, a ban on refer-a-friend bonuses, and a requirement that promotions be approved by an FCA-authorised person.
That is why the sign-up screen on a UK crypto app carries the FCA’s prescribed wording: “Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong.”
The promotions rules govern how crypto is sold. Authorisation would govern how the firms doing the selling are run. They stack rather than replace one another, and the second one does not retire the warning attached to the first.
Nor does a licence turn crypto into a protected product. Cryptoassets are not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, and nothing in the reporting so far settles whether the new regime extends compensation or Financial Ombudsman access to crypto activities. Authorisation would mean a firm has to meet standards and can be sanctioned for failing them. On current rules it would not mean anyone reimburses you if the firm collapses, and it would never mean anyone reimburses you if the price falls.
What to watch
Whether the FCA publishes a register of applicants and, later, of authorised crypto firms, and how quickly. That register is the practical tool in all of this: once it exists, checking whether a platform is on it takes seconds, which is more use to a reader than any amount of guidance.
And whether any large platform serving UK customers signals that it will not apply. That decision tends to arrive as a quiet email about account changes rather than an announcement, and it is the one that would actually move where people’s coins sit.