Jurisdictions

Pick the jurisdiction that fits your crypto business, not the one that sounds best

Answer five questions and we will narrow every regime we file in down to the two or three that match what you do, who your clients are and what you can spend. We also show you what we ruled out, and why.

14
REGIMES COMPARED

Every one we file in, from MiCA across the EU to CNAD in El Salvador.

9
WITH OUR OWN FILINGS BEHIND THEM

Each has its own page carrying the capital, the fees, the timeline and a cost calculator.

2026-09
EVERY FIGURE DATED

No number reaches this page without a source and the date it was last checked.

The selector

Five questions, and the list becomes two or three

Nothing here is required, and the answer recalculates as you go. It runs entirely in your browser — nothing is sent anywhere, and we ask for nothing personal.

01 What will the business actually do?

Tick everything that applies. We ask about the activity, not the licence class — the class is the answer you came for, and the same activity has three different names at three regulators.

02 Where are your clients?

Pick one.

03 Retail or professionals only?

Turns the answer over harder than the budget does, and no competitor asks it.

04 First-year budget

Our fee plus the capital the regulator makes you lock up. Not the running costs.

05 Can you put people on the ground?

Presence requirements stall more projects than capital does.

 Tick anything above — the shortlist below narrows as you go.

See the shortlist ⟶
The shortlist

What fits, and what we ruled out

Three regimes, closest first, recalculated the moment you tick anything above. Under them is every regime that dropped out and the single answer that dropped it — that list is the part worth reading.

Send this shortlist to yourself

The regimes above with their capital, timeline and our fee, the answers you gave, and a link that reopens this page exactly as you left it. One email, and a person reads it: reply to it with your model and you get an answer, not a sequence.

Get this checked against your model ⟶

What we rule out, and why

    Every line is about the fit between that regime and the answers you gave — never a judgement of the jurisdiction itself. Those live further down the page, where they carry a source and a date.

    Five questions cannot see your cap table, your banking history or where your team already lives, and any of the three can flip this list. Send us the model and we will check it against your model — free, and before you spend anything on filing.

    Side by side

    Every regime we file in, on the numbers that decide the outcome

    Figures are quoted in the currency the law uses, and each one carries its own source date in the data behind this page. Sort by any column, switch off the ones you do not need, and scroll inside the table for the rest. Answer the selector above and the rows that no longer apply fade — they are never removed, because seeing what dropped out is half the value.

    Compare them side by side
    Columns
    Cyprus CySEC MiCA CASP authorisation EUR 50,000 – EUR 150,000by activity 10–12 months from €55,000 ✓ Local staff
    Latvia Latvijas Banka MiCA CASP authorisation EUR 50,000 – EUR 150,000by activity ~12 months from €65,000 ✓ Local staff
    Slovakia NBS MiCA CASP authorisation EUR 50,000 – EUR 150,000by activity 10–12 months from €45,000 ✓ Local staff
    Malta MFSA MiCA CASP authorisation EUR 50,000 – EUR 150,000by activity 6–9 months from €45,000 ✓ Local staff
    Netherlands AFM MiCA CASP authorisation EUR 50,000 – EUR 150,000by activity ~12 months from €70,000 ✓ Local staff
    Poland regime not in force KNF MiCA CASP - regime not in force EUR 50,000 – EUR 150,000by activity Not applicable - applications cannot be filed On request ✓ Local staff
    Dubai (VARA) VARA Virtual asset activity licence AED 100,000 – AED 1,500,000AED 100,000 to AED 1,500,000 - fifteenfold, inside one regulator 4-9 months; 12-18 if the file is thin from €50,000 — Local staff
    Abu Dhabi (ADGM) FSRA Financial Services Permission (FSP) for virtual-asset activities USD 50,000 – USD 500,000USD 50,000 to USD 4,000,000 across categories, plus a crypto add-on of USD 20,000 on application and USD 15,000 a year Not published by FSRA from €80,000 — Local staff
    Dubai (DIFC) DFSA Crypto token regime USD 30,000 – USD 1,000,000USD 30,000 to USD 2,000,000 - sixty-six fold, inside one regulator 6-9 months, of which 3-5 to in-principle approval from €70,000 — Local staff
    Singapore MAS Payment Services licence, DPT service S$100,000 – S$250,000S$100,000 for a Standard Payment Institution, S$250,000 once volume exceeds the SPI caps 18–30 months from €65,000 — Local staff
    Hong Kong SFC VATP licence, Type 1 + Type 7 HK$0 – HK$25,000,000HK$0 for a Customs MSO to HK$25,000,000 for a stablecoin issuer - three regulators, not one ladder 9–18 months On request — Local staff
    Canada FINTRAC MSB registration — not a licence CAD 0No capital requirement and no government fee. The cost is the compliance programme FINTRAC inspects afterwards. 6–9 months from CAD 40,000 — Director + MLRO
    Switzerland FINMA / SRO SRO membership or FinTech licence CHF 20,000 – CHF 300,000No capital for SRO membership; CHF 300,000 for a FinTech licence; CHF 10,000,000 for a bank 2-5 months to SRO admission from CHF 28,000 — Local staff
    El Salvador CNAD Digital asset service provider registration Assessed on the modelNo published minimum - CNAD assesses resources against the model you propose 20 business days at CNAD, once the file is complete from USD 20,000 — Director + MLRO

    Minimum capital is the lowest figure the regime asks for any of its activities, and the highest. Answer question 01 above and the range collapses to the single figure that applies to you — which is the point: in Dubai that spread is fifteenfold and in the DIFC sixty-six.

    Every figure here is a floor: the lowest the regime allows, not what your build will cost. Tell us what you are building and we will check it against your model — free, and before you spend anything on filing.

    On the map

    Who grants what, and where one licence stops

    Every route on this page, drawn where it actually is. The EU block is one application: a MiCA authorisation passports across it. Everything else is a separate file with a separate regulator — and two of those sit three streets apart in the same city, each invalid in the other's territory.

    Regulator map — the jurisdictions Protegra files in 14 licensing routes. Europe: one MiCA authorisation passports across 6 markets (CYPRUS — CySEC; LATVIA — Latvijas Banka; SLOVAKIA — NBS; MALTA — MFSA; NETHERLANDS — AFM; POLAND — KNF). UAE: 3 separate routes, no passport (DUBAI — VARA; ABU DHABI — FSRA; DUBAI (DIFC) — DFSA); a federal layer, the CMA (formerly SCA) and the CBUAE, sits over all three and is not a fourth route. Standalone: Canada — FINTRAC; Switzerland — FINMA / SRO; Singapore — MAS; Hong Kong — SFC; El Salvador — CNAD. Every name here is also a link in the list under the map. Source: jurisdictions.seed.json.

    European Union6 routes

    One MiCA authorisation, and it carries into every member state. The capital is identical in all of them; what differs is the supervisor, the national fee and how fast a file moves.

    Capital
    EUR 50,000 – EUR 150,000
    Decision
    10–12 months
    Our fee
    from €45,000

    CyprusLatviaSlovakiaMaltaNetherlandsPoland

    European Union6 routes

    United Arab Emirates3 routes

    Canada1 route

    Switzerland1 route

    El Salvador1 route

    Singapore1 route

    Hong Kong1 route

    Written answers

    The questions the selector answers, written out

    Ten short pieces, one per question people actually ask. They say in words what the selector above computes — open the one you came for.

    01 Where a licence costs least — and what you give up for it

    The cheapest routes are the registration regimes, and they are cheap for a reason: registration is not authorisation. Canada charges no government fee and asks for no capital, and El Salvador publishes no capital threshold at all — but neither lets you run a trading venue, and neither passports anywhere. Inside the EU the floor is Slovakia, where our fee and the Class 1 own-funds requirement together start at €88,000 before a single running cost.

    02 Where a decision comes fastest

    Only two regulators on this page bind themselves to a clock, and neither clock is the answer to “how long will this take”. MiCA gives the supervisor 25 working days to confirm your file is complete and 40 more to assess it — but that clock starts only on a complete file, and building one takes about two months before anything is filed. End to end the EU routes run six to twelve months, and the table above carries each country’s own figure. CNAD states twenty business days for a complete definitive application. FSRA publishes no processing statistics at all, so any fixed Abu Dhabi timeline you are quoted came from a consultant, not from the regulator.

    Regulator time only, by jurisdiction A month scale showing REGULATOR time only — the clock that runs once a complete file is submitted, not the length of the project. The table on this page gives the end-to-end figure for each jurisdiction. Solid gold bars are the two clocks a regulator actually publishes: 25 plus 40 working days under MiCA Article 63, and 20 business days at El Salvador’s CNAD. Six other jurisdictions are dashed grey spans, ranges taken from practice rather than from a published figure. Three more have no clock to show: Abu Dhabi’s FSRA publishes no statistics, Canada’s FINTRAC runs a registration rather than an assessment, and Poland has designated no supervisor, so an application cannot be filed there at all. Zero on the scale is the day a complete file is submitted, so a firm should add its own preparation on top — two to three months on most routes. REGULATOR TIME ONLY 2 PUBLISHED · 6 FROM PRACTICE months → 0 3 6 9 12 El Salvador 20 bd MiCA · 6 EU 65 wd Switzerland 2–5 mo Dubai VARA 4–9 mo Netherlands 6–9 mo Dubai DIFC 6–9 mo Singapore 6–12 mo Hong Kong 6–12 mo published deadline — the regulator’s own range from practice — not a published figure NO CLOCK PUBLISHED AT ALL Abu Dhabi · FSRA no statistics published Canada · FINTRAC a registration, not a queue Poland no supervisor — cannot file MiCA Art. 63: 25 wd completeness (hollow) then 40 wd assessment = 65 wd ≈ 3 calendar months. CNAD: 20 bd = 20 business days, complete file. MiCA · 6 EU = CY · LV · MT · NL · PL · SK. Netherlands: AFM says 5 mo AT BEST; 6–9 in practice. Hong Kong adds 3–6 mo of prep; VARA 12–18 if thin. Zero is the day a COMPLETE file goes in. Add your own preparation — on most routes two to three months. End to end the table above gives 6–12 months in the EU, and up to 18–30 outside it.
    Solid gold is a clock the regulator itself publishes. Everything dashed is practice, and three regimes have no clock to show at all.
    03 One licence, twenty-seven markets: the passporting route

    MiCA is the only regime on this page that sells reach. One CASP authorisation carries into every member state, and the capital is identical in all of them — €50,000, €125,000 or €150,000 depending on the class. What differs between the six EU routes is the supervisor, the national fee, the tax treatment of the owner, and how quickly a file actually moves. The ESMA register, as of its 31 August 2026 release, holds 350 active authorisations.

    What one MiCA authorisation reaches One CASP authorisation, granted once, carries into 27 European Union member states — Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden — and into the 3 EEA states, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, which take MiCA through the EEA Agreement rather than directly and are drawn as hollow nodes. The same list is written out as text under this graphic. ONE LICENCE AUT BEL BGR HRV CYP CZE DNK EST FIN FRA DEU GRC HUN IRL ITA LVA LTU LUX MLT NLD POL PRT ROU SVK SVN ESP SWE ISL LIE NOR 27 EU + 3 EEA

    Where that one authorisation is valid27 + 3

    Hollow marks the three EEA states. They take MiCA through the EEA Agreement rather than from the regulation directly, and we have not re-read that instrument ourselves — treat them as reachable, but ask us before you plan a launch around one.

    And where it is notno passport anywhere

    Every other regime on this page is a border, not a bridge. A licence granted in one of them authorises you in that jurisdiction and nowhere else, so serving a second market means a second application to a second regulator, with its own capital, its own fees and its own clock.

    The sharpest case is Dubai, where two of those borders run through one city. A VARA licence covers the mainland and every Dubai free zone except the DIFC; a DFSA licence covers the DIFC and nothing outside it. Neither is valid in the other’s territory, and the two head offices are a short walk apart.

    04 Licensing an exchange or a trading venue

    This is the activity where the regimes diverge most violently. Under MiCA, operating a trading platform is Class 3 at €150,000. In Dubai, VARA asks AED 800,000 with a licensed custodian and AED 1,500,000 without one. In the DIFC, operating an alternative trading system is Category 3A at USD 200,000 — the cheapest venue capital on this page, and the one most often reported wrongly, because Category 1 in the DFSA is deposit-taking, not trading. And two regimes do not permit it at all: FINTRAC registration does not authorise a venue, and neither does Swiss SRO membership.

    05 Licensing custody of client assets

    Custody is the activity regulators price highest, and the spread is enormous: €125,000 as MiCA Class 2, AED 600,000 in Dubai — where custody must also sit in its own legal entity — USD 250,000 in Abu Dhabi against a twenty-six week expenditure test, and USD 1,000,000 in the DIFC. If you are non-custodial, say so in question 01: it removes most of the capital requirement on this page, and it is the single answer that changes the result most.

    06 Licensing a token or a stablecoin issue

    This is the most expensive wrong turn available on this page. Issuing your own token is not a CASP service under MiCA at all — an asset-referenced token issuer needs €350,000 under Title III, and an e-money token issuer must already be a credit or e-money institution. In Dubai, Category 1 VA Issuance is AED 1,500,000 plus two per cent of the value of fiat-referenced assets issued, and that two per cent is an addition, not a substitute. In Hong Kong an HKMA stablecoin issuer needs HK$25,000,000. Getting the token classification wrong costs the project, not the fee.

    07 Licensing payments, on-ramp and off-ramp

    The moment client money passes through your account rather than a licensed payment provider, you have crossed out of crypto licensing and into payments licensing — and most founders do not realise it until a bank asks. That is the border where MAS payment services, the Canadian MSB regime and the Hong Kong MSO licence actually live. Answer the fiat question in 01 honestly: it moves the result more than the budget does.

    08 When you cannot put staff on the ground

    Presence requirements stall more projects than capital does, and almost nobody asks about them before choosing a country. Two routes on this page work with a named compliance owner and no local office: FINTRAC registration in Canada and CNAD registration in El Salvador. Every other regime here expects people in the country — MiCA supervisors increasingly test whether effective management is genuinely local, and the Gulf regulators require UAE-resident approved persons by rule, not by preference.

    09 When you must serve retail customers

    Serving consumers narrows the field and changes the economics. In the UAE it does not stop you licensing, but it does stop the 0% free-zone rate: transactions with natural persons are an Excluded Activity for the QFZP regime under Ministerial Decision 229/2025, Article 2(2)(a). In Hong Kong retail access to a VATP came with its own conditions and an SFC-approved token list. Under MiCA retail is the assumed case, which is exactly why the conduct, disclosure and complaint-handling obligations are as heavy as they are.

    10 Moving off an old VASP registration onto a full licence

    The national VASP registers closed when MiCA took full effect on 1 July 2026, and the regulators cleared their queues in the final month: 75 of the 350 authorisations now on the ESMA register were notified in June 2026 alone. If you hold an old registration, the question is no longer whether to convert but into which member state, and whether your existing file survives contact with a MiCA assessment. We price that conversion separately from a fresh launch because it is a different piece of work.

    Each one is the written answer to a question the selector above computes. Tick an activity in question 01 and the ones that apply open by themselves.

    They answer the general question. The one that matters is whether YOUR model clears the regime you like. Leave us the details and we will check it against your model — free, and before you spend anything on filing.

    Our view

    Where we will not send you, and why

    Not countries we dislike — every regime on this page is one we work in. This is where we say no, and why. One entry today: we add to it only where we have the country work behind the claim, not where it would merely sound principled.

    Poland, until the law exists

    The act implementing MiCA in Poland was vetoed and no supervisor has been designated, so the KNF cannot accept an application. Poland has zero entries on the ESMA register as of its 15 September 2026 release, against 350 authorisations in force across the rest of the EU. We keep Poland in the table above and on its own page because the question gets asked constantly — but there is nothing to file there today, and anyone quoting you for a Polish licence is selling a queue position for a queue that does not exist. If you have already been quoted for one, send us the quote and we will tell you plainly what it can buy today and what it cannot.

    Questions

    What people ask before they choose

    01Is running a crypto business legal?＋

    Yes, in every jurisdiction on this page — that is what puts them on it. What varies is whether your specific activity needs a licence, a registration, or nothing at all, and that turns on what you actually do rather than on the word "crypto". Every regime here authorises crypto-asset activity under a named legal instrument; the work is matching your model to the right one.

    02Do I need a licence, or is a registration enough?＋

    They are different things and the difference is expensive. A licence authorises you to carry on an activity: MiCA authorisation, a VARA licence, an SFC VATP licence. A registration records that you exist and subjects you to supervision, without authorising anything: FINTRAC in Canada, CNAD in El Salvador. If your model includes running a venue or holding client assets as a regulated custodian, a registration will not carry it, however it is marketed to you.

    03Which jurisdiction is cheapest?＋

    It is the wrong question, and asking it is how projects end up filing twice. Canada asks for no capital and no government fee, and that genuinely is the cheapest entry — but it authorises less. The right question is which of the regimes that authorise your activity is cheapest, which is exactly what question 01 of the selector is for. Once the activity is fixed, the cheapest answer is usually obvious and usually not the one in the listicles.

    04How long does it really take?＋

    Only two regulators here publish a clock. MiCA gives the supervisor 25 working days to confirm completeness and 40 more to assess — but that starts on a complete file, and assembling one is where the months actually go. CNAD states twenty business days for a complete definitive application. Everywhere else the honest answer is a range from practice: four to nine months in Dubai, six to twelve in Singapore, six to twelve of SFC review in Hong Kong after three to six of preparation. FSRA publishes no statistics at all, so any fixed Abu Dhabi number you are quoted came from a consultant. Those ranges are ours, out of files we have run — not a promise any regulator made. If you need a date you can plan a launch and a banking application around, send us the model and we will time it against your file rather than against the average.

    05Can I get a licence without living there?＋

    Sometimes, and it is worth checking before anything else: presence requirements stall more projects than capital does. Canada and El Salvador work with a named compliance owner and no local office. Everywhere else expects people in the country — the Gulf regulators require resident approved persons by rule, and EU supervisors increasingly test whether effective management is genuinely local rather than nominal.

    06Does one licence work in more than one country?＋

    Only MiCA. One CASP authorisation passports into all 27 member states plus the EEA, and that is the single reason to accept the EU's substance and reporting load. Nothing else on this page travels: a VARA licence does not work in the DIFC and a DFSA licence does not work in mainland Dubai, even though both are Dubai.

    07What actually gets applications refused?＋

    Rarely the capital. What fails is a business plan that describes a different company from the one in the AML policies, a compliance officer who cannot answer for the model, source-of-funds evidence for the shareholders that does not hold, and an application that asks for permissions the applicant has no demonstrated capability to exercise. Regulators are reading for coherence across the whole file, and incoherence is visible from the first page.

    08Can I buy a company that already holds a licence?＋

    You can buy the company. Whether the permission survives is a separate question, and the answer is usually that the regulator assesses the new controllers and approved persons on a change of control — which is most of the authorisation process again, with the added problem that you have inherited whatever the previous owner did under the licence. When a ready-made licensed company is offered at a discount to a fresh application, that discount is the risk being priced. Before you sign anything for a ready-made company, send us the target: reading what it actually holds costs less than inheriting what it did.

    09What does it cost to keep the licence after year one?＋

    More than founders plan for, and it is the number missing from every comparison table including the one above, which is deliberately a floor and not a budget. Recurring costs are the supervisory fee, the compliance and MLRO function, the audit, the monitoring and Travel Rule tooling, and the local substance the regulator expects to still be there at inspection. Each country page carries its own recurring figures. If you want the real second-year number for your own headcount and volumes rather than a floor, tell us what you are running — that is a half-hour conversation, not a quote request.

    10Do I need local staff?＋

    Question 05 of the selector answers this for your case. In summary: the Gulf regimes require UAE-resident approved persons — a senior executive officer, a compliance officer and an MLRO — by rule. MiCA does not prescribe headcount but supervisors test whether the mind and management of the firm is actually in the member state. Canada and El Salvador are the two routes here that work without it.

    Reference: all jurisdictions in the Licensing Atlas.

    Written by Anastasia Sidorenkova ·
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    Tell us what you are building

    The selector narrows the field; it does not choose for you, and five questions cannot know your cap table, your banking history or where your team already lives. Tell us what you hold, what you move, who your clients are and where they live — we read the model against the regimes still standing, say which of them a supervisor would accept it in, and say plainly where it would fail. If that is none of them, we say that too: it is a cheaper conversation than a rejected application.

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