The FCA opened a 151-day window, and its own record says 17% get through

The Financial Conduct Authority started taking crypto authorization applications on Wednesday morning. Firms that want to keep trading in the UK have until the end of February 2027 to file, which is 151 days, and the regime itself goes live on 25 October 2027. The announcement carries no number for how many will get through. The FCA's own case file does.

What the FCA's own case file says

The regulator has supervised crypto firms for anti-money-laundering compliance since January 2020. Through 1 August 2026 it had closed 391 registration cases:

• 263 firms withdrew before a decision, or 67% of everything closed
• 68 firms registered, which is 17%
• 16 formal refusals, and 44 cases closed on other grounds
• In the past twelve months the FCA decided 23 cases and registered 13, a rate of 56%
• 391 cases across 79 months works out at about five decisions a month

Firms in this system mostly stop themselves. Two out of three withdrew, which a company does when it runs out of time, cannot evidence a control the regulator asked about, or reads the direction of travel and stops paying its lawyers. The 17% is the number a founder should plan against. The 56% covers decisions taken in one period rather than a matched group of applicants, so it measures the recent queue and not a lowered bar.

Nothing you already hold transfers

Emma Banymandhub, who runs the trade body The Payments Association, made the practical point to Cointelegraph.

“MLR registration will not carry over, and firms should be realistic about the standards they will need to meet.”

— Emma Banymandhub, The Payments Association

Emma Banymandhub, CEO of The Payments Association

So the 68 firms on the anti-money-laundering register are back in the queue with everyone else, and the test is wider this time. The FCA finalised the rulebook in June, covering stablecoin issuance, crypto trading platforms and market abuse. None of the three came up in a money-laundering registration.

Now put the two dates together. Applications close at the end of February, the regime starts on 25 October 2027, and the FCA says it expects to decide the window's applications before that. The gap is 238 days. At five decisions a month, the pace of the past six years, 238 days clears about 39 cases. The FCA will hire against this, so read five a month as a rate and not a forecast. It still sets the scale of what the regulator has promised.

Other regulators take longer than their calendars suggest. Gemini waited 23 months between its in-principle approval and its Major Payment Institution licence in Singapore, and Singapore has a reputation for moving quickly. Cyprus ran the same exercise under MiCA, and its window shut on 27 February 2026, after which a CySEC licence became the only way to serve clients from the island.

The calendar put two deadlines on one day. Australia's grace period also ends tonight: from 1 October a firm there offering digital asset financial services without a licence is breaking the law. One regulator closed its window this morning while another opened one, and the firms running global desks are reading both letters over the same coffee.

Written for information, not as legal or investment advice; check any filing deadline against the regulator's own pages.