Two questions decide everything: are you in scope, and what it costs in Own Funds. Both are easy to get wrong. Settle them now, for free, before the window opens on 30 September.
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Build before the gateway opens; submit early in the window; reach completeness without delay. PASS — the FCA’s pre-application support service — is open from July 2026.
Permitted to continue business until the application is determined — the saving provision applies if undetermined at commencement. A refusal moves the firm to the transitional: existing contracts run off; no new contracts.
No saving provision. New business ceases while the application is assessed; existing contracts run off under the transitional exemption, which ends 25 October 2029.
Regulated cryptoasset activity in the UK cannot be carried on.
SI 2026/102 Part 7 — saving provision (reg 53) and transitional provision (regs 55–56, to 25 October 2029) · FCA gateway direction.
The UK cryptoasset regime, drawn as a map of the Underground — seven lines, 53 stations, from FSMA 2000 to the regime going live on 25 October 2027. Every station opens the paper it stands for. Updated as the rulebook moves.
The instruments that run on day one of an engagement — given away. Each ends in a cited PDF for the board, and a clear next step if the answer is yes.
Inside or outside, decided in writing. Twenty-five questions across five stages that resolve whether you need Part 4A authorisation — and for which activities.
The requirement, calculated before it is required. Your indicative Own Funds Requirement under CRYPTOPRU 4, with the OFTR showing where your risk assessment takes the number above the floor.
Authorisation is not a compliance overhead. It is the licence to operate, a scarce early position, and a barrier built from the difficulty of authorisation itself. Start with the free instruments; move up as the window approaches. Every step stands alone — no step commits you to the next.
Inside or outside, and the Own Funds floor — both settled before the window opens. Each instrument ends in a cited PDF for the board — K-CON, run in The Concentration Number, lands in The Capital Number's. A work email unlocks all three.
The authorisation, rehearsed before the FCA watches. The Dry Run works the full readiness questionnaire into three deliverables: The Readiness Number, The Manifest, and The Programme. One score, one cargo list, one clock.
The application, templated document by document. The prudential models, application-grade. Together they structure the submission — built to the gateway checklist, instrument by instrument. The client keeps the tools. The Pack is paid for once and owned outright — no seats, no subscription, no lock-in. What is bought is kept.
The application form is short; the application is not. The universe, scoped: every component, mapped to the artefacts that stand behind it — the critical-path documents settled first, the universe scoped to the firm’s permissions, not applied wholesale. Evidenced, not asserted: a master Evidence Register ties each requirement to the artefact that satisfies it, so the case officer can follow the thread end-to-end. Single source of truth: every document tracked against permission, subject area, owner and critical-path status.
The drafts, checked at the gate — where faults are still cheap. Your team’s pack, read against FCA expectations and marked up before the case handler sees it.
The application, carried across the perimeter — drafting to determination. The full pack drafted, and the case run through Connect from submission to determination.
The closing fee of The Crossing is earned on the FCA’s confirmation of completeness — a complete, defensible application. The decision itself sits with the regulator alone. Queries during assessment are handled within the fixed fee: the same team that built the pack answers the regulator’s questions, and strategy and perimeter are discussed with the FCA at PASS before filing, not tested against it cold. Every document is machine-checked against the consolidated rulebook for consistency and completeness; every judgment is made by a senior practitioner. The pack arrives internally consistent because consistency is engineered, not proofread.
The FCA made its cryptoasset rules on 30 June 2026 (PS26/9–13) and published the application form on 8 July; the statutory perimeter was fixed in February (SI 2026/102). Every instrument on this page is calibrated to those final texts. The Pack and The Gate Check are built against the final Handbook — not the drafts. A project doesn’t wait for the gateway: if you’re scoping authorisation now, that conversation starts today.
One paper for each of the five policy statements of final rules made on 30 June 2026 (PS26/9–13), the three pieces of finalised guidance (FG26/5–7), and the two guidance consultations on the overall risk assessment (GC26/4–5), still in draft. Each sets down what its part of the regime means for a firm seeking authorisation — the decisions, the evidence and the controls — in plain English, for the people who have to action it.
The gateway sits where two disciplines meet, and most advice arrives from one side of it. Crypto-native advisers know the assets but have never carried a firm through prudential supervision. Traditional compliance firms know the regulator but read digital assets through analogy. cryptopru is built at the confluence: over twenty-five years of prudential, risk management and regulatory practice, applied directly to cryptoasset business models — custody and staking, stablecoin issuance, lending against digital collateral — under rules written for them, not analogised to them.
cryptopru is a new way to buy regulatory expertise. Twenty-five years of authorisation and prudential practice — policy-making at the Bank of England and the FSA, prudential risk at Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Nomura, Macquarie and Wells Fargo, regulatory consulting at EY — compiled by Palvinder Gill into instruments a firm can run, keep, and act on.
The instruments are not templates reverse-engineered from the rulebook. They are the working tools of successful regulatory advice and practice (including a UK MTF subsidiary authorised in 2025; a digital-assets CCP supported through its FCA and BoE regulatory engagement in 2024), refined in use, then published. Behind the imprint sits a bench of senior practitioners of the same vintage — doers, not overseers. The people who design the strategy write the application; nothing is handed down.
Every instrument in the house is calibrated to the made instruments — PS26/9–13, SI 2026/102, CRYPTOPRU — and signed and dated on publication. The archive is the credential.
Palvinder Gill · Founder · palvinder.gill@cryptopru.com
The Perimeter Read · The Capital Number · The Dry Run · The Field Guide · The Crossing