These are the questions founders actually ask before an application, answered at length rather than summarised. The Swiss SRO process from VQF membership to operating; what a Swiss SRO licence really costs once maintenance is included; MiCA against Switzerland and El Salvador; local substance requirements; banking after approval; and what happens if an application is rejected.
Licensing content on the open web has a quality problem. Most of it is written to rank, which means it repeats the same shallow summary of the same five jurisdictions and stops precisely where the difficult part begins. These pieces are written for the decision instead: they go into the parts that actually determine whether an application succeeds, and they stop where our knowledge stops.
Where should you start?
What each piece answers
| If you are asking | Read |
|---|---|
| How does the Swiss SRO route actually work, step by step? | The complete Swiss SRO application process |
| What will this cost me, including the years after approval? | What a Swiss SRO licence actually costs |
| Switzerland, MiCA or El Salvador — which route? | Swiss SRO vs EU MiCA vs El Salvador |
| Which licence does an exchange need? | Which licence does a crypto exchange need? |
| Stablecoin payments or card issuing — what applies? | Licences for stablecoin payments and card issuing |
| What does 'local substance' actually mean? | Local substance requirements explained |
| Can a licensed crypto business open a bank account? | Banking for licensed crypto businesses |
| Should I buy a ready-made licence instead? | Is buying a ready-made licence worth it? |
| We were rejected. Now what? | What happens if your licence application is rejected |
| Who are you, and can I verify it? | Who is CryptoLicense? |
It depends on what stage you are at. If you have not yet settled which regulated category your business falls into, none of these will help as much as choosing a licence will — that is the question underneath most of the others. If you have chosen Switzerland and want to know exactly what the path looks like, the process and cost pieces are the two to read. If you are comparing routes, start with the three-way comparison.
How to read them
How these are written
- The answer comes first, in the opening paragraph — not after eight hundred words of preamble
- Every regulatory claim cites the regulator, the statute or a standards body, never a competitor's blog
- Where a rule is changing, the statement carries a date so you can tell whether it has aged
- Where we do not have a figure — approval rates, timelines, fees — we say so instead of estimating
- Each piece exists in both English and Chinese; the switch is in the header, and it lands on the same article
Every regulatory statement in these pieces cites something authoritative — FINMA, EUR-Lex, the FATF recommendations, or the relevant national regulator. Where a rule is in flux the statement is dated, because a confident undated claim about crypto regulation is usually a claim that has already expired. The MiCA transitional period ending on 1 July 2026 is the clearest recent example: a great deal of published guidance still describes the world before that date.
Where we do not have a figure, the piece says so. You will not find an approval rate, a typical timeline or a fee table anywhere on this site, because we do not have numbers for those that would survive being checked — and any of them would sit badly next to the fact that no regulator's decision can be guaranteed.
Both languages, same article
Every piece exists in English and in Chinese. They are written separately rather than translated, because the question an English-speaking founder types is not the question a Chinese-speaking one types, and a translation answers the wrong one fluently. The language switch in the header takes you to the same article in the other language rather than back to the homepage.
For definitions, the glossary covers thirty terms whose meaning genuinely changes between jurisdictions — VASP, CASP, EMI, MSB and the rest. For shorter answers, the FAQ is the faster route. Nothing on this site is legal advice; CryptoLicense is an advisory firm, not a regulator and not a law firm.
Key points
- Written for the decision, not for the search engine
- Every regulatory statement cites the regulator, the statute or a standards body
- Where a rule is in flux, the statement is dated
- The same topics exist in Chinese — use the language switch in the header
- Nothing here is legal advice