Crypto license cost: official fees and capital by country.

It depends on the country and the services. Application fees in our tables run from nothing for a FinCEN or FINTRAC registration to US$98,000 for an exchange licence in the AIFC (Kazakhstan) and US$125,000 in ADGM where a trading facility is included. Yearly fees vary as much: US$1,900-5,000 by class in Mauritius, from £2,251 in the UK, AED 80,000-200,000 per activity in Dubai. Capital comes on top and stays in the company: €50,000-150,000 under MiCA, AED 100,000-1.5 million per activity in Dubai, HK$5 million in Hong Kong. We quote our own fee after the free assessment.

By filing fee alone, the lowest outside the EU are the federal registrations in the US and Canada, where FinCEN and FINTRAC charge nothing, and Bahrain, where a crypto-asset licence costs BD 100 to apply for; Mauritius asks US$1,000-3,000 by class. Under MiCA, France charges nothing on filing but €10,000 on authorisation, and Estonia €3,000 to apply. A low fee says little about the total, though: Bahrain wants BD 25,000-300,000 of paid-up capital, a FinCEN registration does not replace state licences, and banks look at who supervises the licence. We compare the full cost for your services, not the filing fee.

MiCA sets the capital: €50,000, €125,000 or €150,000 by service class, or a quarter of the previous year's fixed overheads if that is higher. Each EU and EEA state sets its own fees. Estonia charges €3,000 to apply; France €10,000 on authorisation and €10,000 a year; Malta €10,000-25,000 to apply and €10,000-50,000 a year, plus €2,000 per service and 0.05% of volume; Luxembourg €30,000 and then €40,000 a year; the Netherlands €200 per AFM hour, up to €100,000; Ireland a €30,000 yearly levy; Germany a time-based fee and a levy from €3,250 (€6,500 once the balance sheet reaches €100,000). The MiCA license page covers the authorisation itself.

Outside the EU the range is wide: KYD 1,000 to apply for a Cayman registration, US$5,000-10,000 in the BVI, SCR 75,000 in Seychelles, USD 6,132 on registration in El Salvador and AED 40,000-100,000 for the first activity in Dubai. Yearly fees and capital differ just as much, and the table above gives both. Our VASP license guide explains the term and compares 12 regimes.

In Dubai, VARA charges AED 40,000 to apply for advisory or transfer and settlement services and AED 100,000 for broker-dealer, custody, exchange, lending and borrowing, management and investment, or Category 1 VA issuance; each further activity pays 50% of the lower application fee. Supervision costs AED 80,000 or 200,000 per activity a year, and paid-up capital runs from AED 100,000 for advisory to AED 1.5 million for an exchange that does not use a VARA-licensed custodian, or a share of fixed annual overheads if that is higher, added up across activities. The licensee also needs a company, for example in the DMCC free zone, whose Crypto Centre package costs about AED 31,000. Abu Dhabi's ADGM has its own regulator: US$20,000 to apply and US$15,000 a year, or US$125,000 and US$60,000 with a trading facility.

No. Capital held as own funds stays with your company; nobody is paid. Where the rules accept insurance or a guarantee instead, that costs a premium. Either way it must be in place, usually before the licence, and kept at all times, sometimes in a set form: under MiCA as own funds, an insurance policy, a comparable guarantee or a mix; under VARA in a bank trust account naming VARA or as a surety bond. Several regimes add liquidity rules on top, such as net liquid assets of 1.2 times monthly operating costs under VARA or three months of expenses in Bahrain.

The supervision fee or levy is one part of them. Examples from our tables: Lithuania 0.7% of annual income, at least €3,000; Gibraltar a £12,254 base fee and a £28,183 additional fee, plus 0.1% of trade volume up to £92,700; Bahrain 0.25% of operating expenses within BD 2,000-12,000; Thailand 0.002% of an exchange's trading value, THB 500,000-20 million. Audits, compliance staff, reporting and, where required, local directors and an office come on top.

Rarely. Malta's MiCA fees, the UK's £11,260 registration fee, Singapore's licence fees, Bahrain's application fee and New York's BitLicense fee are not refunded, and BaFin charges its time-based fee even if the application is withdrawn or refused. The GFSC, VARA and AFSA do not start work until the fee is paid. That is why we check the business model and the file before you pay any official fee.

Federally, registering with FinCEN as a money services business costs nothing and is renewed every two years. Most states license money transmission separately, with their own fees, net worth and bond rules. In New York the BitLicense costs US$5,000 to apply for; licensees pay a yearly NYDFS assessment (one part based on custody balances and New York transactions, the other an equal share of NYDFS costs) and keep a surety bond or trust account of at least US$500,000, while capital is set case by case.

We quote our fee after the free assessment, once the country and the list of services are fixed. The written quote shows our fee apart from the official fees and capital on this page, so you can see which part goes to the regulator and which to us.