Crypto-Asset Service Provider (CASP)

Overview

Crypto-Asset Service Provider is a legal classification used in regulatory frameworks, notably the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation. Covered services can include custody, trading-platform operation, exchange, order execution, placement, transfer, advice, and portfolio management.

Whether an organization is a CASP depends on its actual activities, location, client relationships, and statutory definitions, not merely its branding. Authorization, governance, capital, safeguarding, conduct, complaints, records, and operational-resilience duties may apply to covered providers.

Businesses should assess each service and fund flow against current law, implementation dates, exemptions, transitional rules, and supervisory guidance. A general glossary definition cannot determine authorization requirements for a specific product or cross-border operating model.

The financial-crime compliance workflow for Crypto-Asset Service Provider (CASP) should locate where evidence enters, where a rule or judgment is applied, what state changes, and which downstream service relies on the result.

A crypto-asset service provider is an entity legally defined to offer specified crypto-asset services, with scope depending on the applicable jurisdiction. CASP status is activity-based and jurisdiction-specific, so providers must map actual services to current legal definitions and authorization rules.

A production treatment of Crypto-Asset Service Provider (CASP) should test an entity legally defined to offer specified crypto-asset services, with scope depending on the applicable jurisdiction within the relevant asset, decision, or service state. The Crypto-Asset Service Provider context record for an entity legally defined to offer should preserve source data, configuration or policy version, responsible actor, exception, and outcome. Review of Crypto-Asset Service Provider (CASP) should determine whether safeguards addressing an entity legally defined to offer changed exposure in practice, not merely whether a document or setting existed.