Aave Secures FCA Approval for UK Crypto Operations

Despite the regulation milestone, AAVE token prices remained under pressure alongside the rest of the crypto market.

Aave Labs announced on May 28 that its two subsidiaries located in the United Kingdom, Push Labs Ltd. and Push Virtual Assets Ltd., have been granted registration by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to operate as crypto asset exchange providers in the UK.

The approval also gives the firms permission to issue electronic money under the UK’s Electronic Money Regulations 2011.

Aave Pushes Deeper Into Regulated Crypto Services

In a post published on X, Aave said the approvals would allow “regulated cryptoasset activities and payments infrastructure” in the UK, including stablecoin on- and off-ramping services.

The companies were assigned firm reference numbers 1031720 and 1031721, while Push’s electronic money authorization carries reference number 900984.

According to Aave founder Stani Kulechov, the setup will allow users to move fiat currency directly into the Aave ecosystem through what he described as a “vertically integrated zero-fee on-ramp.”

He also linked the FCA registration to Aave’s broader regulatory plans in Europe, referencing the company’s MiCA license through the Central Bank of Ireland for operations across the European Economic Area.

The announcement has come at a particularly busy time for the protocol. Earlier this week, it published a governance “Temp Check” proposal to deploy Aave V4 on Avalanche, including a dedicated liquidity hub for tokenized real-world assets.

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Former Ava Labs executive Luigi D’Onorio DeMeo wrote on X that Avalanche had a “huge opportunity” to build on-chain capital markets around the new version of the protocol.

It has also come when the wider DeFi sector is facing renewed scrutiny after several major exploits this year. Things have gotten so bad that yesterday, OpenZeppelin co-founder Manuel Aráoz warned users on X that he now considers “all DeFi unsafe.”

He argued that AI-powered coding tools have tilted the balance too heavily in favor of attackers and named Aave as one of the platforms he no longer thinks is safe.

Aave was indeed heavily affected by an exploit in April on KelpDAO. However, recent community discussion has focused on its response, with analyst Jose Fabrega praising Aave DAO for using roughly $58 million from its treasury to help cover losses tied to rsETH depositors after the incident.

An April 25 report on the recovery effort showed Kulechov personally pledged 5,000 ETH toward the “DeFi United” initiative formed to stabilize markets after the exploit created a deficit of more than 100,000 ETH across connected protocols.

AAVE Price Slips

Despite news of the UK approval, data from CoinGecko showed that at the time of writing, Aave’s native AAVE token had dipped about 5% in 24 hours to trade at around $81.

That figure also represented a nearly 10% drop during the last seven days, as well as a 17% fall over the past month. Still, Aave remains one of the largest DeFi lending protocols, with more than $13.6 billion in total value locked (TVL).