GBBC Response to the FCA’s Consultation Paper CP26/13 | Cryptoasset Perimeter Guidance (PERG 19)

GBBC has submitted its response to the Financial Conduct Authority on Consultation Paper CP26/13, which sets out proposed perimeter guidance (PERG 19) to help firms determine whether they require authorization under the new UK cryptoasset regime.

PERG 19 is a pivotal piece of the new framework: it applies familiar FSMA and RAO concepts—arranging, dealing, safeguarding, operating a trading platform, and staking—to cryptoasset market structures built on self-custody, non-custodial wallets, decentralized protocols, APIs, validators, dashboards, and public on-chain data. How these concepts are drawn will shape who needs authorization as firms prepare for the gateway.

In our response, GBBC supports the FCA's objective of clear, practical guidance while making targeted recommendations to ensure it catches genuine financial intermediation without sweeping in software, infrastructure, and protocol-level services. Our central concern is the lack of clarity on the treatment of technical service providers, and the risk that the guidance inadvertently pulls them inside the perimeter.

In particular, GBBC emphasizes the need to:

🔹 Anchor the perimeter in functional agency—control of client assets, discretion over execution, counterparty selection, transaction-term influence, pooling, or reward management—rather than whether a service is useful or adds value

🔹 Confirm that providing software, connectivity, APIs, dashboards, validators, and non-custodial tools is not regulated activity unless the provider performs the elements of the relevant activity

🔹 Clarify that the absence of a technical-services exclusion is not a positive indication that technical services are in scope

🔹 Avoid framing staking as inherently arranging, distinguishing technical staking from intermediated, custodial, or pooled models

🔹 Prevent double regulation where DLT is used only as a record, register, or settlement layer for an existing specified investment

🔹 Manage the sequencing between PERG 19 and the FCA's forthcoming DeFi guidance, so that firms whose perimeter status turns on that later work are not prejudiced against a fixed authorization window

Due to this issue running across the consultation, GBBC has, for ease, consolidated the detail on how it affects each question in an Annex to the response.

We are grateful to our members for their contributions to this work and for the practical insights they brought to the response.

GBBC welcomes the FCA's engagement on these questions and stands ready to continue supporting the development of a UK cryptoasset regime that is credible, proportionate, and aligned with the operational reality of the firms it is designed to serve.

Read the full response here.