10 Longest-Established FinCEN-Registered Brokers

Ten firms make up this list, the longest-running of the FinCEN-registered brokers WIKILIX has on record with a clean regulation status. They run in order of the year each opened, from Monex Europe, trading since 1985, down to BitMart, which started in 2017. Behind them sit thirty-one FinCEN-registered firms that carry both a founding year and a clean status; these ten are simply the oldest of that group.

The order here is age, and age alone. Nine of the ten have operated for a decade or more, and their WIKILIX scores run from 26 for FCX, the second-oldest name, up to 59.1 for Robinhood, with a median of 53.5 across the ten. Eight of them hold at least one more top-tier authority alongside their FinCEN entry; only FCX and Lucky Ant Trading carry FinCEN and nothing else.

What a FinCEN registration actually is

FinCEN is the United States Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. A firm on its register is recorded as a money services business for anti-money-laundering purposes, which is a very different thing from holding a licence to take on retail traders. FinCEN sets no capital rules, vets no order execution, and runs no compensation scheme. For anyone trading from inside the United States, that oversight sits with the CFTC, the National Futures Association or the Securities and Exchange Commission instead.

This is why the ten read the way they do. Payment companies such as Monex Europe and TransferWise appear because they moved client money into and out of the US and registered accordingly. Crypto venues like Kraken, Uphold and BitMart are here for the same reason. Their FinCEN entry is genuine and it is on record, but on its own it says nothing about pricing, execution or who each firm will actually open an account for.

Reading the ranking by age

Sorting by founding year rewards survival and not much else. Monex Europe has traded through forty years of currency markets. FCX, second on the list from 1995, carries only its FinCEN entry and one of the lowest scores in the group. A long record counts for something, yet it is plainly not the same as a strong one, and the two oldest names here sit at opposite ends of the score range because of it. Where two firms opened in the same year, WIKILIX score breaks the tie, which is why Uphold sits above Lucky Ant Trading among the three that opened in 2013.

Before you act on any name here

• Confirm the FinCEN entry yourself on the MSB Registrant Search, and read it as an AML registration, not a trading permission.
• Check which body oversees the account you would actually open: for a US resident that means the NFA or CFTC, not FinCEN.
• Weigh the other authorities in the table. Robinhood and Eddid add an SEC registration, Kraken adds FCA and CySEC, while FCX and Lucky Ant Trading hold nothing beyond FinCEN.
• Treat the founding year as where a firm began, which need not be where it is headquartered now and is not where it is cleared to accept clients.