InfoBytes Blog
NYDFS to collect assessment fees from licensed virtual currency businesses
On April 9, the New York governor signed S. 8008-C, which enacts the state’s 2023 fiscal year budget and requires, among other things, NYDFS to start charging a new assessment fee to all virtual currency businesses licensed in New York in order to cover the costs associated with their oversight and “defray operating expenses.” Specifically, Section 206 is amended to read: “The expenses of every examination of the affairs of any person regulated pursuant to this chapter that engages in virtual currency business activity shall be borne and paid by the regulated person so examined, but the superintendent, with the approval of the comptroller, may in the superintendent’s discretion for good cause shown remit such charges.” The amendments do not specify a specific assessment amount, however regulated companies engaged in virtual currency business activity “shall be assessed by the superintendent for the operating expenses of the department that are solely attributable to regulating such persons in such proportions as the superintendent shall deem just and reasonable.”
NYDFS Superintendent Adrienne A. Harris issued a press release the same day praising the budget adoption as it now allows the Department to collect supervisory costs from licensed virtual currency businesses as it does for banking and insurance companies. Noting that “New York was the first to start licensing and supervising virtual currency companies,” Harris said that the “new authority will empower the Department to build staff with the capacity and expertise to best regulate and support this rapidly growing industry.”