Crypto licensing capital compared: three regimes, three different kinds of number
Founders comparing crypto licensing regimes usually want one table: jurisdiction on the left, capital figure on the right. That table is misleading, because Kenya, Brazil and the United Kingdom do not ask the same kind of question. One publishes a schedule, one publishes a formula, and one publishes three tests and takes the highest. Knowing which kind of number you are dealing with matters more than the number itself.
Kenya: a schedule, plus a combination rule most readers miss
Kenya publishes an actual table. The Fifth Schedule to Legal Notice No. 134 of 2026, headed “Capital and Liquidity Requirements” and referenced at rr. 6(2)(h), 85(2)(a), 85(3) and 85(12), has exactly two columns: paid-up capital and liquid capital. There is no fee column and no insurance column in it, whatever secondary summaries suggest. Selected rows, as instrument text:
- Stablecoin issuance: KSh 300,000,000 paid-up; liquid capital of KSh 60,000,000 or 100% of current liabilities for at least 30 days, whichever is higher.
- Wallet provider: KSh 150,000,000 paid-up; KSh 30,000,000 or 100% of current liabilities for 30 days, whichever is higher.
- Exchange: KSh 100,000,000 paid-up; KSh 20,000,000 or 8% of total liabilities, whichever is higher.
- Broker and tokenisation: KSh 10,000,000 paid-up; KSh 2,000,000 or 8% of total liabilities, whichever is higher.
- Investment adviser: nil, and nil.
Two provisions do more work than the table. Reg. 85(6) governs a licensee undertaking more than one permissible activity: it holds the paid-up capital of the highest-capital category plus fifty per cent of the paid-up capital for each additional activity. Not the sum, and not the highest alone. An exchange that also runs a wallet is therefore at KSh 150,000,000 plus KSh 50,000,000, or KSh 200,000,000. And reg. 85(7) lets the authority raise the requirement by reference to a firm’s risk profile, which makes the whole schedule a floor rather than a ceiling.
The percentage limbs are also live rather than decorative. For a category with a KSh 2,000,000 liquid floor, the 8%-of-total-liabilities limb overtakes the floor at roughly KSh 25,000,000 of total liabilities — a level a working brokerage passes early.
Brazil: a calculation, not a price list
Brazil is commonly reported as roughly R$10,800,000 to R$37,200,000 for a virtual asset service provider. That range is real but it is an output, not a schedule. The arithmetic sits in the annexes to Resolução Conjunta 14/2025 read with Resolução BCB 517/2025 of 3 November 2025, and it has two parts: a cost parcel driven by the number of registered operational categories, with an uplift where the firm runs its own technology infrastructure and a ceiling on that uplift; and an activity parcel driven by the services performed, the nature of the funds handled and the applicable multipliers.
Component values are not reported consistently across published commentary, and the annexes govern. Published law-firm worked examples put intermediation-only near R$9.2m and intermediation-plus-custody near R$13m — both below the announced floor. That is not necessarily an error in either the examples or the range, because the formula moves with the assumptions. It is a reason to run your own numbers rather than to adopt anyone’s.
One Brazilian rule has no equivalent elsewhere and catches groups out: capital must be subscribed and paid up in cash, with integralisation immediately following subscription. A commitment letter, a parent guarantee or an intra-group receivable is not capital. And capital is a Phase 1 gate, not something to be topped up later in the process.
The UK: not one number, but the highest of three
The UK asks a different question again. The permanent minimum requirement varies by activity, confirmed in the FCA’s June 2026 policy statements: GBP 75,000 for dealing as agent and arranging; GBP 150,000 for operating a trading platform, staking, or safeguarding; GBP 350,000 for stablecoin issuance; GBP 750,000 for dealing as principal. Where a firm carries on several activities, the highest applicable figure applies — not the sum, which is the opposite of Kenya’s approach.
But the PMR is only the first of three tests. Own funds must be the higher of the permanent minimum requirement, the fixed overheads requirement, and the K-factor requirement. The K-factors published in PS26/12 are K-SII at 1% of stablecoins issued and K-RCS at 0.04% of assets safeguarded. For a firm of any scale, the binding constraint is usually the fixed overheads requirement or a K-factor, not the headline PMR — and the fixed overheads requirement is computed from prior-year audited figures, which is a dependency on your auditor rather than on your balance sheet. There is no transitional relief.
The comparison that is actually useful
Ask three different questions, in this order. In Kenya: which row of the Fifth Schedule am I on, and does reg. 85(6) apply to me? In Brazil: what does the formula output on my assumptions, and can I put that in cash? In the UK: of my PMR, my fixed overheads requirement and my K-factor requirement, which is largest? Only after that do the figures mean anything side by side. Deliberately, this article converts nothing into a common currency: exchange rates move, and a capital plan built on last quarter’s rate is a capital plan with an unstated assumption in it.
The checklists behind this article
Each regime has its own readiness document: every item cited to a rule, regulation or article number, every figure marked as instrument text or as reporting of it, and open questions left marked open rather than quietly filled in. Kenya, USD 79 · Brazil, USD 79 · United Kingdom, USD 149. Updated editions are free as each position develops.
If you already know your category in one market and only need the capital figure checked against the instrument, the checklist for that market is enough on its own. If you are running one entity across two or three of these regimes, where a group structure decision in one changes the capital answer in another, the 48-hour gap check is built for that case.