Coinbase Says VASP Approval Makes It UK’s Biggest Registered Crypto Company

Coinbase says it is now the largest registered digital assets company in the U.K.

That milestone, announced by the cryptocurrency exchange Monday (Feb. 3), follows Coinbase’s receipt of virtual asset service provider (VASP) registration from the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). This will allow Coinbase to offer both crypto and fiat in Great Britain, its largest international market.

“The UK Government and the FCA are developing welcome regulation for the crypto sector, hopefully joining the growing trend of countries embracing economic freedom and free markets,” the company said in its announcement.

“Governments around the world are waking up to the fact that crypto fuels economic prosperity. We believe that crypto is the most important technology that can generate growth in the world, and the UK is poised to benefit from this.”

The announcement, following a similar approval for Coinbase last week in Argentina, comes amid a changing attitude toward crypto in the company’s largest market, the U.S., with the election of President Donald Trump.

“As blockchain and cryptocurrency continue to work toward the heart of traditional finance, 2025 is shaping up to be a defining year for investors, businesses and regulators alike — one that could either cement crypto’s place in the global financial system or expose the industry’s lingering vulnerabilities,” PYMNTS wrote last week.

“Either way, the era of digital assets operating in a regulatory gray zone appears to be ending. What comes next will depend on how the industry, and the policymakers shaping its future, navigate this new reality.”

Also Monday, Coinbase announced it had purchased the onchain ads and attribution platform Spindl, part of what the company said was its goal of supporting developers who “are building the apps to bring people onchain.”

“As we’ve said before, there’s a natural flywheel here: We support developers who build onchain apps, those apps attract users onchain, and having more users incentivizes more developers to build onchain,” the company said. “And the faster we spin this flywheel, the easier it will be to bring more and more people onchain. Builder virality is the thing that spins that flywheel faster.”

With the purchase of Spindl, Coinbase added, the company can improve the “onchain discovery problem” for onchain builders.

According to the announcement, Spindl was founded in 2022 by Antonio Garcia-Martinez, who had been an early member of the Facebook ads team, and who shipped the tech giant’s first version of keyword targeting, audience targeting and Facebook’s programmatic ad exchange FBX.