FTX was in conversations with the FCA about the crypto license before warning the watchdog

The last week was warned of the Financial Conduct Authority before FTX, when the cryptocurrency exchange tried to secure a British license, which led to new tensions between the market guard and offshore crypto actors.

The FCA said last Friday that the crypto-asset platform operated by Sam Bankman-Fried, based on the Bahamas, "aims at people in Great Britain without permission" and warned consumers against doing business with the company.

Bankman-Fried said the Financial Times that the warning was a “surprise” after FTX “spoke to the FCA about the licensing for a while.

The patient situation between the British supervisory authority and FTX, one of the world's largest companies for digital assets, comes about when the British government has tried to make the country an attractive place for business for international crypto groups after criticism has been expressed that the FCA is sector.

ftx initially doubted the importance of the consumer warning of the FCA and claimed that the supervisory authority intended to draw the consumers aware of a fraud that pretends to be the company. FTX said that the telephone numbers mentioned in the FCA declaration were not really used by the stock exchange and were associated with fraud.

However, people with direct knowledge of the FCA process said that the warning refers to FTX itself. The fraudulent telephone numbers could have been mistakenly accepted, the people said.

The FCA said that the telephone numbers had now been removed and a company would normally not contact a warning, unless the company was registered in the United Kingdom. Another statement declined.

Bankman-Fried said his company tried to comply with the British rules. "We believe that we comply with the British regulations, but will act as always if we receive instructions from the supervisory authorities," he said.

companies that offer the trade or storage of crypto must be registered with the FCA for money laundering supervision if their activities with digital assets are "practiced in the United Kingdom as part of the business activity". You also need the normal licenses to handle regulated activities such as payments and derivatives.

But foreign crypto companies may generally serve British customers, provided they have no branches or try to sell their services in Great Britain.

The FCA crypto registration regime became a point of dispute last year, as a company and lawyers about a lack of qualified staff at the supervisory authority and lengthy delays. For the slow progress, the FCA was partly responsible for the poor quality of the applications of crypto companies and defended its stringent approach.

The British ministers have tried to hit a more positive tone since then by promising Great Britain a "global center" for digital assets, and argued that openness to digital assets was the key to the country's competitiveness in financial services according to the Brexit.

The FCA collided with Binance last year when the world's largest crypto exchange tried to secure a British license. After Binance bought an FCA-regulated company, the supervisory authority published a number of public complaints against the company, in which it was said that its "complex and risky financial products" was "a considerable risk for consumers".

Binance, a main competitor of FTX, then withdraw his application, but announced that it has announced the relationships and again to apply for British supervision.