New York Proposed Faster Coin Listings for BitLicense Firms

New York’s Department of Financial Services proposed a new route for licensed virtual-currency firms to add coins on December 11, 2019, opening the first formal review of how the state’s four-year-old BitLicense regime handled asset listings.

The proposal did not repeal the BitLicense or loosen entry requirements for companies without a New York license. It targeted a narrower operational bottleneck: firms already holding a BitLicense or New York trust charter could potentially add eligible assets without seeking separate prior approval for every coin.

That distinction mattered because DFS said it had granted two dozen virtual-currency licenses and charters since 2015, while the number of available coins had grown rapidly. The agency was considering whether supervision could move from repeated coin-by-coin approvals toward approved institutional processes, while retaining the power to stop a listing.

Two proposed listing routes

The first route was a public DFS list of coins permitted for licensed virtual-currency activities. A licensee could use a listed coin without another approval, provided it notified the department. The proposal’s footnote identified eight assets then contemplated for that list: Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ether, Ether Classic, Litecoin, Ripple, Paxos Standard and Gemini Dollar. “Contemplated” was not the same as final inclusion or an endorsement of any asset.

The second route would let a licensee submit a company-specific coin-listing policy for DFS approval. Once the policy was approved, the firm could self-certify that a proposed coin met it, notify DFS in writing before offering the coin, and proceed without obtaining separate prior approval for that particular asset.

A licensee without an approved policy would still need prior DFS approval for coins outside the public list. All licensees would also have to report the coins used or offered no later than their next quarterly filing.

Self-certification still carried controls

The term self-certification did not mean unrestricted listing. The proposed model required a licensee’s board or equivalent authority to approve the policy and independently decide on each new coin. Firms were expected to address conflicts, preserve minutes and supporting reviews, and keep the records available to DFS.

Before listing, the firm would document a full risk assessment covering the coin’s creation and governance, operational demands, systems changes, cybersecurity and theft, ownership concentration, manipulation and fraud, code defects, capital implications, and legal and regulatory exposure. DFS also proposed an independent audit review to confirm that associated risks had been assessed and addressed.

After listing, the licensee would periodically re-evaluate the coin, maintain controls and have a process for delisting it, including notice to affected customers and counterparties. DFS expressly retained authority to object before or after a self-certified listing and to require delisting. The practical shift was therefore from advance approval of every asset toward supervised firm-level governance, not the regulator’s withdrawal.

What remained unresolved

Comments were due January 27, 2020. On December 11, 2019, none of the proposed pathways was final, no licensee had received authority under the new framework, and the proposal did not determine whether any coin complied with federal securities, commodities or anti-money-laundering law.

The immediate institutional significance was the regulator’s willingness to revisit implementation after nearly five years. Faster asset additions could narrow product differences between New York-facing platforms and venues elsewhere, but the event-day record supplied no listing timetable, customer count, trading volume or price effect. No market-impact calculation is supportable from the guidance alone.

Later context

DFS finalized coin-listing and Greenlist frameworks on June 24, 2020 after reviewing public comments. That later action confirms that the December 11 proposal became the basis for an operating regime, but it does not change the proposal-only status that applied on the event date.