Crypto: does the AMF have the resources to do its job?

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.