The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) list of registered crypto asset providers includes 42 entities and hasn’t changed since August.
However, on Sunday, October 8th, the United Kingdom’s financial markets regulator, the FCA added several crypto exchanges to its warning list of non-authorized firms that customers around the world especially the U.K. should avoid.
They added A grand total of 143 new entities to the warning list, including major exchanges, such as Huobi-owned HTX and KuCoin which was quite stunning. Notably, the warning list does not reveal much apart from the statement, “You should avoid dealing with this firm.”
However, in the U.K., firms with permission to carry out crypto asset operations must either register with the FCA or get a temporary status to operate which is the most reliable authorization in the market.
Crypto Promotions Rules Cause Discontent
In July, Jayson Probin, crypto financial promotions lead at the FCA, suggested that failure to comply could result in criminal charges, they stated that they would take swift action against persons illegally promoting to U.K. consumers.
Furthermore, this may include, but not limited to, crossing firms on its warning list and requesting takedowns of websites, social media accounts, apps, and all other promotions that breached the enforcement actions.
In August, the FCA accounted that since 2020, it has received 291 registration applications and it has only approved 38 of them, which is roughly 13%. At the time of writing, the FCA’s list of registered crypto asset service providers includes 42 entities, such as Bitstamp, Revolut, and Gemini.
Understandably, growing discontent among service providers is shown by their actions. PayPal has reacted by halting crypto transactions for its U.K. customers until it develops a way out to comply with the FCA’s requirements.
Due to regulatory changes, Dubai-based cryptocurrency exchange Bybit also suspended all its services in the U.K. in late September drawing lots of attention.
