How France shut down its crypto start-ups

Jounal du Net — 09.03.2021.

On 19 December 2020 the transitional period for compliance with the digital asset service provider regime ended. As the applications of most companies in the sector had still not been processed by the regulators by that date, these companies were forced to stop communicating about their service and in some cases even close down pending registration.

William O’Rorke was interviewed by Charlie Perreau for the Journal du Net on the reasons for this stalemate.

William O’Rorke points out that regulators were not sufficiently equipped to deal with the influx of cases to explain the low number of companies registered by the deadline.

« The regulators are very competent but they are not sized to accommodate so many flows,” assures William O’Rorke, a lawyer at ORWL, a firm specialising in crypto and blockchain that is assisting several companies in obtaining their DASP. »

It then recalls that, while the regulator may have shown ” clemency ” to some applicants by allowing them to continue to operate while ceasing all promotional communication, this limitation often amounts to the same thing as a pure and simple cessation of activity, given the highly competitive nature of a developing sector.

« A lot of services like staking depend on online advertising because they are very competitive sectors. Some have shot YouTube campaigns that they can’t even get out »