VASP licence: the register Europe closed, and what took its place.

No. National VASP registration regimes in the European Union were transitional arrangements that ran alongside MiCA and have now closed — Lithuania’s ended on 31 December 2025, Czechia’s on 1 July 2026. The instrument that replaced them is authorisation as a Crypto-Asset Service Provider, and unlike the old registration it is valid in every member state.

VASP is Financial Action Task Force vocabulary that entered national anti-money-laundering law; CASP is a defined status under Regulation (EU) 2023/1114. The practical difference is what is examined. Registration asked whether you had an AML programme. Authorisation examines share capital, governance, the segregation of client assets, ICT resilience and whether the individuals running the firm meet fit-and-proper standards.

Not as a basis for providing crypto-asset services to EU clients. The transitional periods that allowed registered firms to keep operating have expired. If you held one and did not convert, you are not authorised, and buying an entity that used to hold one does not change that — supervisors assess the firm in front of them, not its former register entry.

Dubai. The Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority issues an instrument called a VASP Licence and its public register lists holders under that name. It is a current, open regime — and it is a licence in the full sense, with capital requirements and supervision, not a registration.

Because registration and authorisation are different tests. At the end of 2022 the Lithuanian register held 758 virtual asset service providers, ahead of Estonia’s 381 and Poland’s 346. When the Bank of Lithuania began assessing CASP applications, six were granted. Most of the 758 never intended to meet an authorisation standard; the register simply had not asked them to.

There is no easiest in the sense of a lower standard — MiCA sets the same requirements everywhere, and the capital thresholds are identical in every member state. What genuinely differs is the supervisor’s speed, the tax the owner pays on dividends, and whether the national regulator has layered anything on top. Our jurisdiction pages set those side by side.

Not a MiCA one. What you need depends on where your clients actually are, because these regimes reach across borders by client location rather than by your office address. A firm serving Asian institutional clients from the Gulf faces an entirely different question from one onboarding EU retail users, and the honest first step is to establish which regulators your client base pulls you into.

Yes, outside the EU. Canada’s FINTRAC money services business registration carries no capital requirement and no application fee, and for a firm whose model genuinely fits it, that is a legitimate route rather than a shortcut. What it does not give you is access to the EU market, the right to hold client assets in custody in Europe, or a passport into any neighbouring regime.

Three things, in roughly equal measure. Some closed. Some moved the activity to a jurisdiction that still registers rather than authorises. Some are still operating on the assumption that nobody will check — which works until a bank, an exchange or a counterparty asks for the authorisation number, and then it stops working all at once.

Yes, and it is often simpler. A firm with no legacy register entry has nothing to unwind and no prior filings that have to be reconciled with the new application. We scope the right jurisdiction and the right class first, then build the file to that standard from the start.