Crypto Compliance: what the registers say and how to check them

How to read crypto compliance

1. Start from the jurisdiction, not the brand. Authorisation is granted by a named authority under a named regime. A firm authorised in Malta under MiCA and a firm holding a New York BitLicense are supervised by different regulators against different rulebooks, and neither authorisation says anything about the other. Pick the jurisdiction that has to be satisfied and read its register page.
2. Read the service, not the licence's reputation. Every regime licenses by activity. Under MiCA a firm may be notified for custody and not for operating a trading platform; under VARA it may hold broker-dealer services and not exchange services; Bermuda's classes carry different allowed activities. The service pages list only the firms whose own entry names that activity.
3. Verify against the regulator's own file. Each page carries the register it came from, that register's retrieval date, and a link to the source. Registers move: firms are added, authorisations end, and entries are corrected. Before relying on a listing, open the source and check the entry there.

What an authorisation does and does not cover

An authorisation is granted by activity, and it is granted by ONE authority. A firm notified under MiCA for custody is not thereby allowed to operate a trading platform; a New York BitLicence says nothing about the EEA; and a firm passported into a member state is supervised by its home regulator, not by yours. Where a register publishes an end date for an authorisation, this site carries it, and where a register publishes nothing about a condition or a restriction, this site says nothing about it - the authority's own file is the only place that answer exists.

Common questions

Where do these listings come from?

Five public registers published by financial regulators. Nothing is submitted by the firms and nothing is editorial: each row is reproduced from the register with the date it was read.

Does appearing here mean a firm is recommended?

No. It means a regulator published its entry. Listings are unclaimed register records, ordered by the register and never by payment.

A firm passported into my country - is it authorised there?

Under MiCA it is authorised at home and has notified your country; your national regulator has not authorised it separately. The register page shows the home authorisation and the passported availability as two different counts.

Why is my regulator missing?

Because its register could not be read as data on the day this site was built. docs/DIRECTORY-RAIL.md lists every regulator that was tried, the URL, and what it answered - a register we cannot read is recorded as absent, not guessed at.

The register by jurisdiction