Useful Articles / Due diligence
How to check whether an exchange is actually licensed where you live
A licence badge on a landing page proves nothing. Regulators publish registers precisely so that you do not have to take a platform's word for it, and checking one takes about five minutes. Here is which register applies to you and how to read what you find.
Which register applies where
| Where you live | What to check |
|---|---|
| EEA | ESMA's public register of authorised crypto-asset service providers, plus the national regulator that granted the licence |
| United Kingdom | The FCA register — crypto firms must be registered under the money laundering regulations to promote services to UK customers |
| United States | CFTC and NFA registers for derivatives; state money transmitter licences for spot, plus New York's BitLicense separately |
| Dubai | VARA's public register, checking the full licence list rather than preliminary approvals |
| Switzerland | FINMA's authorisation lists, or the recognised self-regulatory organisation the firm belongs to |
Search the entity, not the brand
This is where most checks fail. Global exchanges serve different regions through different legal entities, and the entity name rarely matches the app. An EU customer of one large venue is dealing with an Austrian company; a Dubai customer of another is dealing with a Middle East subsidiary. If you search the brand name and find nothing, that does not always mean the platform is unlicensed — but it does mean you have not finished checking.
Find the entity name in the platform's own terms of service or footer, then search the register for that.
Three traps worth knowing
Preliminary approval is not a licence. Some regulators publish provisional approvals separately, and explicitly state that holders may not service clients yet.
Licences are activity-specific. A firm authorised for custody or advisory services is not thereby authorised to run an exchange. Check that the listed activity matches what you want to do.
A licence in one place is not a licence everywhere. Within the EEA, passporting means a licence from one member state covers the others — but that logic does not cross into the UK, Switzerland or the UAE.
What a registration does and does not give you
Authorisation generally means supervision, conduct standards, capital requirements and rules about how client assets are held. Under MiCA, minimum capital ranges from fifty thousand euros for advisory and order execution to a hundred and fifty thousand for exchange platforms — a floor rather than the real cost of compliance.
What it does not do is remove market risk. ESMA has warned that consumer protections depend on who the user is dealing with, and every regulator repeats some version of the same point: a supervised venue is still a place where you can lose money on a trade. Regulation addresses custody, conduct and failure — not price.
Two questions worth asking beyond the register
Which entity holds your assets? Custody risk attaches to the legal custodian, not to the brand on the interface. This is frequently a different company from the one you opened the account with.
What happens to your position if the rules change? Traders in the EU learned this in 2026 when a stablecoin came off compliant venues and one large exchange stopped serving the bloc. Both were foreseeable from the regulatory calendar. Neither was obvious from the app.
A short verification routine
Find the legal entity in the terms of service. Search the register that applies where you live. Confirm the entry is a full authorisation, not a preliminary one. Check the listed activities cover what you want to do. Then check the custodian separately. Five minutes, and it is the only check that actually proves anything.