Finland’s crypto regulation is now in full effect. The first five crypto service providers have been approved to legally operate in the country, the Finnish financial regulator confirmed to news.Bitcoin.com. The grace period for operating without registration has expired.
Also read: Finland Begins Regulating Crypto Service Providers
Only Five Registrants
Finland’s Financial Supervisory Authority (FIN-FSA) announced on Nov. 1 that it has granted registration to five crypto service providers. The registrants are Localbitcoins, Northcrypto, Prasos, Prasos Cash Management, and Tesseract Group. A spokesperson for the FIN-FSA confirmed to news.Bitcoin.com Monday:
Starting from 1st of November these five virtual currency providers are the only ones allowed to operate in Finland.
Localbitcoins operates a global peer-to-peer bitcoin marketplace. Northcrypto provides an exchange service for BTC and LTC for EUR. Tesseract Group, formerly Whalelend, provides asset management, OTC trading, and lending services.
Prasos offers crypto exchange and asset management services under four different brands. Coinmotion is an investment platform for BTC, LTC, ETH, XRP, and XLM, which also offers private crypto banking, white label solutions, and merchant services. The others are Bittiraha, a Bitcoin community and broker; Denarium, a physical bitcoin manufacturer; and Bittimaatti, a bitcoin ATM network.
“The registration process requires significant effort from the applicants, for example concerning customer due diligence and written documentation of activities,” the FIN-FSA explained.
During the registration process, the regulator assessed whether the applicants have adequate measures in areas such as preventing money laundering (AML) and terrorist financing (CFT), holding and safeguarding client assets, as well as having adequate management structure. The registrants have submitted written statements to the FIN-FSA describing how they are complying with the requirements. Going forward,
