Picture a crypto firm that, within two years of launch, has signed up users in the UAE, the UK, the EU and Singapore. Its product, team and revenue have all grown in step. Its compliance function, the layer meant to support everything else, has almost certainly not.
According to Sherlocq, good intentions are rarely the issue. Founders understand the need to stay compliant and legal counsel knows the relevant frameworks. Knowing that rules exist, however, is very different from running a live regulatory research operation across several jurisdictions at once. That gap is where firms run into serious difficulty.
On paper, the workflow looks simple. Firms monitor regulatory change in each market, map new obligations to internal processes, update policies, train staff and keep audit-ready records. In reality, most rely on a fragmented mix of methods.
A general counsel skims regulator newsletters, a compliance officer manually checks the FCA website, and a consultant hired to secure VARA registration in the UAE disappears once the licence arrives. Research ends up reactive and under-resourced compared with the sheer volume of change.
Each regime also moves at its own pace. VARA evolves on a different cycle from the EU’s MiCA, while Singapore’s MAS licensing requirements bear little resemblance to the FCA’s Travel Rule guidance. Juggling all four without a proper system is effectively a liability waiting to surface.
The consequences are real. A missed AML update under MiCA can prompt action from a European national regulator. An outdated reading of the UK’s crypto promotion rules, which were significantly tightened in 2023, can lead to FCA enforcement and lasting reputational harm. In Singapore, firms that fell behind on MAS expectations for Digital Payment Token providers have lost their licences.
Fines are only part of the cost. Remediation programmes, heightened supervision, leadership accountability and expensive emergency legal support often follow. Most of these failures share one root cause: nobody had a dependable way to identify what they were missing.
What firms need is not more regulator PDFs but fast, jurisdiction-specific intelligence tied to their licence type, products and client base. That includes visibility of consultations, proposed rules and enforcement trends, delivered in a format teams can actually use.
This is the gap RegTech firm Sherlocq aims to close. Instead of manually tracking developments across markets, compliance teams can ask direct questions and receive sourced, structured answers drawn from regulatory content in every jurisdiction. Its coverage spans consultation papers before they become binding, as well as enforcement actions that reveal where supervisors are focusing. The aim is to let teams assess their full position in minutes rather than days, with every answer traceable to its source.
Crypto can deliver big rewards, but not if a regulator shuts the door first. The firms that endure will be those that built compliance into their foundations early.
Vinit Shah, former general manager, VARA, strategic advisor, Sherlocq, said, “Digital asset businesses have scaled their products and their revenues. What has not kept pace is the compliance infrastructure underneath. In crypto, that gap does not stay invisible for long — it surfaces in supervisory action, licence risk, or emergency legal costs that dwarf anything a proper system would have cost.”
Bhavin Shah, founder and CEO, Sherlocq, added, “Crypto compliance is not one jurisdiction. It is four frameworks, evolving at different speeds, with different enforcement priorities. Firms operating across UAE, UK, EU, and Singapore cannot afford to guess what each regulator expects. They need a single, structured view – and they need it current.”
Read the full Sherlocq post here.
By Daniel Willis, Editor of RegTech Analyst
Copyright © 2026 RegTech Analyst
Copyright © 2026 RegTech Analyst
