Crypto desk banking: whether you trade your own money or other people's.

If the firm's own capital is at risk, the business is a proprietary operation: no client assets, no instructions from third parties, no obligation to return anything to anyone. If customers can deposit, hold or withdraw value, the business is holding other people's money and becomes a custody, exchange or portfolio-management profile, whatever it is called.

Everything downstream follows that line: whether a licence or registration is required, whether client funds must be segregated, which regulators can act against you, and which institutions are willing to hold the relationship. Establish which side of it you are on before a single form is filled in.

Customer-funds businesses are assessed on whether client assets can be identified and returned. Expect questions on segregation between company and client funds, the safeguarding arrangement and where it sits, reconciliation frequency, the withdrawal policy, and how a failure of the firm would affect holders. Licensing or registration is usually a precondition rather than a discussion.

A customer-money desk that cannot show segregation will not be onboarded by a bank, however profitable the flow. The realistic route is a licensed electronic money institution or a bank with a documented crypto policy, plus a separate operational account for company funds. Two accounts, with different roles, is the normal architecture.

Own-funds desks are usually not licensed, and that is exactly what makes underwriters cautious: without a regulator in the file, the bank becomes the only control. So they test the origin of the capital, the counterparties the desk faces, and whether the pattern of transfers is consistent with the stated strategy.

Market making and high-frequency activity is the hardest version of this. Turnover that is a multiple of revenue looks like churn to an automated screen. The answer is not a smaller volume claim; it is evidence: exchange or venue statements, counterparty agreements, a written strategy and risk limits, and a description of why the transfer count is what it is.

For an own-funds desk: proof of the capital's origin, the entities and venues trading, an audited or management-accounted profit and loss statement, risk limits and a written strategy, and the expected transfer pattern in count as well as value.

For a customer-money desk: the licence or registration, the client-money policy, the safeguarding or segregation arrangement with the institution holding it, the reconciliation process, the withdrawal policy, and the list of counterparties and liquidity providers.

Both need ownership, residence and tax status for every beneficial owner, and a disclosure of any prior refusal, review or closure. Omitting a past closure is the fastest way to lose an account that was otherwise open.

We classify the desk first, because the classification decides the shortlist. Then we assess ownership, residence, licensing, counterparties, venue relationships and expected flows, build the file, and introduce the case to electronic money institutions, banks with written digital-asset policies and international institutions whose appetite matches the category.

For cases we accept, successful onboarding with a suitable institution is guaranteed. That applies to businesses we have reviewed and approved, and does not extend to reversing a refusal another institution has already made or to profiles we have told you we cannot place.

Applications describing the activity as crypto trading, digital assets or fintech hand the reader a category the reader chooses for you, and the choice is usually the least appealing one available. Vague descriptions also prevent the institution from routing the file to a specialist team, so it lands with a generalist who defaults to no.

Write the description the way an underwriter would: which assets, on which venues, whose capital, against which counterparties, at what transfer count and value per month, and what the account is used for. One honest paragraph outperforms a polished page of industry language.