- The FCA has published guidance on how the law behind the UK’s crypto regime applies to firms, and which activities will need its permission.
- The regime comes into force on 25 October 2027. Firms can start applying for authorisation from 30 September 2026.
- Nothing about your account changes yet. No crypto firm has been authorised under the regime, because the application gateway has not opened.
Anyone buying crypto in the UK has spent years being told that proper regulation is coming. The Financial Conduct Authority has now published another piece of the groundwork: guidance explaining how the law behind the new regime applies to firms, and which activities will require its permission.
Over the next year the firms you use will sort themselves into two groups. Some will apply to the FCA for permission to serve UK customers. Some will not apply, or will apply and be refused. Where your exchange ends up will eventually decide whether you can keep using it from a UK address, and what happens to your coins if it leaves. None of that has been decided yet. This week’s document is a step towards that moment rather than the moment itself.
Guidance and law are two different things
The regime rests on legislation the Government set out in February 2026, which pulls cryptoasset activities inside the perimeter of UK financial regulation. “Perimeter” is the line the FCA draws between activities that need its permission and activities that sit outside its remit altogether. If you are on the inside, you need authorisation and you are supervised. If you are outside, you are not.
Guidance is not that legislation. It is the regulator’s account of how it reads the legislation, which is useful precisely because the FCA is the body that will apply it. It is also a document that can move. The FCA says it will consult in October on targeted updates to the perimeter guidance, covering UK qualifying , proprietary trading and market making, certain technology providers, decentralised , safeguarding arrangements involving central securities depositaries, and financial promotions. That list is worth a second look, because it includes several of the areas the industry finds hardest to place.
David Geale, the FCA’s executive director of consumers, payments and competition, said in the press release announcing the guidance: “We are building a crypto regime that firms, consumers and international partners can trust. Getting ready for regulation starts with understanding how the regime applies to your business. This guidance gives firms the clarity they’ve asked for so they can prepare with confidence.”
That is the regulator describing its own work, and the phrase “the clarity they’ve asked for” is a characterisation of industry sentiment rather than a surveyed finding. No independent evidence is offered in the release that firms in general have read the guidance and consider the questions answered.
What authorisation means, in practice
Most UK crypto firms are already on an FCA list of some kind, which is where a lot of confusion starts. Since 2020, firms carrying on cryptoasset business in the UK have had to register under the money laundering regulations. That registration is an anti-money-laundering check. It asks whether a firm knows who its customers are and has systems to spot dirty money. It says nothing about whether the firm treats customers fairly, holds enough capital, or keeps your coins where it says it does.
Authorisation is a different and much larger thing. A firm applies for permission to carry on specific regulated activities, the FCA assesses whether it meets the conditions, and the FCA can say no. Once authorised, the firm is supervised against a rulebook and can be sanctioned for breaking it. Firms that carry on those activities without permission are doing something illegal, which is the same basic position that applies to unauthorised investment firms today.
The activities that will need permission
The guidance covers five areas. Issuing qualifying stablecoins, meaning designed to hold a steady value against a currency like the pound. Operating a cryptoasset trading platform, which is what most people mean when they say exchange. Dealing in cryptoassets and arranging deals, which covers brokers and anyone matching buyers to sellers. Safeguarding cryptoassets, the regulatory term for holding customers’ coins on their behalf, which is what an exchange does every time you leave a balance sitting in your account rather than moving it to a wallet you control. And arranging cryptoasset staking.
Staking is the one most readers will have met without having it explained. Some , Ethereum among them, secure themselves by having holders lock up coins as a stake in the network’s honest operation, and pay out rewards for doing so. Exchanges commonly do the locking up for you and hand back a share of the reward. Arranging that for UK customers is on the list of activities that will need FCA permission.
The order of events
The sequence matters more than any single announcement. The Government set out the underlying legislation in February 2026, and has since made targeted amendments adding limited exclusions and further clarity for certain technical services providers. The FCA finalised its rules and guidance in June 2026, published as a policy statement. This week’s perimeter guidance follows.
Applications for authorisation open on 30 September 2026. The consultation on perimeter updates runs in October. The regime itself comes into force on 25 October 2027. In between there is a long stretch during which firms can be authorised while the rules they are being authorised under are not yet operating, and the FCA is filling that stretch with pre-application discussions and webinars on the handbook, getting authorised, and the prudential framework.
The FCA’s view is that the Government’s legislative amendments “will not affect most crypto firms”, and that firms can use the guidance now to prepare. That is the regulator’s own assessment of the impact of its own regime, not an independently tested claim.
Britain is not moving early here
Two comparisons put the timing in context. The European Union’s markets in cryptoassets regulation, MiCA, has been fully applicable since the end of 2024, which means firms serving EU customers have been operating under a comprehensive licensing regime for roughly two years by the time the UK’s arrives. A UK regime landing in October 2027 is late to that particular party, whatever else it is.
Closer to home, the FCA has not been absent in the meantime. The financial promotions regime has covered cryptoassets since October 2023, which is why crypto ads aimed at UK consumers carry risk warnings and why first-time buyers get a cooling-off period. Enforcement has continued alongside it: the FCA has run operations with HMRC and the Metropolitan Police against illegal peer-to-peer crypto trading in London, which we covered in our policy coverage. So the honest description is not that crypto is unregulated in the UK today and regulated from 2027. Parts of it are already covered, and the 2027 date is when the full licensing structure switches on.
What to watch
The first real test is 30 September, when the gateway opens. Applications are not public in the way a company filing is, but firms tend to announce when they have applied, and the absence of a well-known name from that stream would say something. So would any exchange quietly closing to UK customers rather than going through the process, which is the pattern the EU saw around MiCA and the reason it is worth checking which platforms actually serve UK customers before committing money to one.
The October consultation is the other thing to keep an eye on, because decentralised protocols and market making are where the perimeter is genuinely unsettled, and where the answer decides whether large parts of are inside UK regulation or outside it.
And when you see a headline over the next year saying the UK has regulated crypto, check which document it is describing. Guidance, final rules, an open application window and a regime in force are four different stages, and only the last one changes what a firm is legally required to do.