Crypto: does the AMF have the resources to do its job?
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A number of crypto players are concerned about the length of time it takes to examine applications to become a PSAN.

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Put the question to a crypto player, and they will often give you the same answer about PSAN registration:

"I waited more than a year."

"My contact person changed several times."

"I didn't hear from them for 4 months."

These delays and difficulties are said to be attributed to a lack of resources at the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF), which has to manage all the cases 📂

For the past year, the regulator has in fact lost some of its staff without the departures being compensated, which is creating some traffic jams.


For its part, the regulator justifies these delays by the fact that some files are incomplete. "There are companies that clearly haven't understood the importance of the process," explains a source close to the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF).

In its defence, the authority also cites the fact that 60 companies have already been registered, which is significantly more than in other European countries.

However, this argument is not convincing on the side of the Association for the Development of Digital Assets (Adan), where they simply point to the existence of "a significant pool of companies" 🇫🇷.

In the meantime, the risk for France, and other countries, is that some companies, particularly the most dynamic ones, will go and get registered and approved elsewhere, to avoid wasting time.

"We have French clients who are prepared, for example, to go to Luxembourg," says Arnaud Touati, founding partner of Hashtag Avocats.

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Grégory Raymond

Grégory Raymond is Head of Research and co-founder of The Big Whale. A specialist at the intersection of traditional finance and digital assets, he has been covering the regulatory, institutional and technological developments of the sector since 2017 for an audience of decision-makers: ,banks, asset managers and fintechs. He is also the author of Bitcoin & Cryptos: L'enjeu du siècle (Talent Éditions, 2025), a book built around interviews with key figures from the ecosystem.

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Raphaël Bloch

Raphaël Bloch is CEO and co-founder of The Big Whale, an independent market intelligence platform on digital assets serving financial market participants through editorial coverage, research, a weekly briefing, and in-person events. He co-founded The Big Whale in April 2022. At the platform, he moderates and hosts institutional events bringing together banks, asset managers, custodians, and infrastructure providers on topics including staking, on-chain yield, stablecoins, DeFi lending, and tokenisation. He has moderated panels at events hosted in partnership with Bitwise, Everstake, Gemini, Morpho, Hexarq, Coinhouse, Delubac, Franklin Templeton, and the Ethereum Foundation, held in London and Paris between late 2025 and mid-2026.

Before founding The Big Whale, Bloch worked as a reporter at Les Echos from December 2016 to March 2020, then at L'Express from March 2020 to March 2022. He also previously worked at Reuters. Since September 2022, he has held a concurrent role as Business Analyst at BFM Business. He has been active in crypto journalism since 2016. He holds degrees from emlyon and the CFJ.

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