Recently the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) grant statewide virtual currency licenses to two applicants: stock trading service Robinhood and cryptocurrency ATM operator LibertyX. The state’s regulatory regime, commonly known as BitLicense, imposes a set of strict disclosure and consumer-protection requirements on any business that offers cryptocurrency-related services to New York residents. Since the framework was introduced in 2015, only a handful of companies had their applications approved by the NYDFS: The elite club of BitLicense holders now counts just 16 entities, the two newcomers included.
The state has also demonstrated that it keeps close tabs on those who might be in violation of the compliance procedures: In September last year, the New York state attorney general's office published a report that raised concerns over price manipulations that were possibly taking place on cryptocurrency exchanges, and referred three of them to the state’s financial regulator.