Blockchain & Web3 Development Company in New York

A BitLicense or Limited Purpose Trust Charter-ready platform is not just code; it is a regulated operating company. The software build alone (matching engine or order routing, hot and cold wallet custody integration, KYC and AML stack, transaction monitoring, customer dashboard, admin console, audit logging) runs USD 600,000 to 2.4M depending on whether you are a broker on top of Coinbase or Anchorage rails or a full self-custody exchange. NYDFS pre-filing technical documentation adds USD 80,000 to 180,000. Add USD 1M to 3M+ for the regulatory program (outside counsel at Sullivan and Cromwell, Davis Polk, or Sheppard Mullin, capital requirements, surety bond, AML and BSA officers, independent IT audit). We give fixed-fee statements of work on the software, and we coordinate directly with your counsel and DFS-experienced consultants on the rest.

The BitLicense (23 NYCRR Part 200) is the New York State Department of Financial Services license required for any business conducting Virtual Currency Business Activity involving a New York resident or a person located in New York. Covered activity includes receiving virtual currency for transmission, storing or holding it on behalf of others, buying and selling it as a customer business, performing exchange services, and controlling, administering, or issuing a virtual currency. Pure software development, miners, and non-custodial wallet developers are generally outside the perimeter, but the line is fact-specific and counsel-driven. The alternative is a Limited Purpose Trust Charter under New York Banking Law, which Gemini, Paxos, NYDIG, and Fidelity Digital Assets hold. We help you scope which route fits, build the technical package, and avoid the cease-and-desist pattern DFS has run against unlicensed operators.

The Southern District of New York is where most consequential US crypto litigation lands, and the Ripple, Coinbase, Binance, Terraform Labs, and Genesis dockets have moved the Howey-test goalposts repeatedly between 2020 and 2025. We do not give legal advice, and we work with your securities counsel (Sullivan and Cromwell, Cravath, Davis Polk, Sheppard Mullin, Wilson Sonsini NY, Cooley NY) from day one on token classification. On the engineering side we build with the assumption that the SEC may issue a Wells notice or a subpoena: clear separation between protocol code and any centralised labs entity, no marketing language implying profit expectation from managerial efforts, geofencing of US users where counsel requires it, and chain-of-custody preservation on all internal Slack, GitHub, and design documents. If a Wells notice arrives, your records are already organised for production.

For regulated NYC clients we default to qualified custodians: Anchorage Digital (the first OCC-chartered crypto bank), Fidelity Digital Assets, BitGo Trust, Coinbase Custody, and Gemini Custody on the LPTC side. For operational hot-wallet flow we integrate Fireblocks (the dominant choice across Galaxy Digital, NYDIG, and most NYC institutional desks), Copper for prime-broker style flow, and Safe (Gnosis Safe) with hardware-backed signers for treasury. Self-custody MPC via Coinbase Cloud or Fordefi is an option where the regulatory posture permits. Every withdrawal path is wired through Chainalysis KYT or TRM Labs for sanctions screening and Travel Rule attribution via Notabene or Sumsub before funds leave the platform.

FinCEN classifies most BitLicensees and LPTCs as Money Services Businesses, which triggers a full BSA program: KYC at onboarding, ongoing CDD and EDD, SAR filings, CTR thresholds where fiat is in scope, and the FATF Travel Rule (FinCEN's 31 CFR 1010.410(e) and (f), updated for virtual assets) on transmittals at or above the threshold. We wire KYC via Sumsub, Persona, Jumio, or Onfido, transaction monitoring and watchlist screening via Chainalysis KYT and TRM Labs, sanctions screening against the OFAC SDN list (including the Tornado Cash and post-2022 Russia-related additions) on every deposit and withdrawal, and Travel Rule attribution via Notabene or Sumsub Travel Rule. Your BSA Officer gets a case-management UI, dispositioned alerts, and exportable audit trails for the NYDFS examination cycle and any FinCEN or OFAC inquiry.

Yes. NYDFS issued stablecoin-specific guidance in June 2022 covering reserve segregation, redeemability, monthly attestations by an independent CPA registered with the PCAOB, and reserve composition. Paxos (PYUSD, USDP, BUSD before wind-down) and Gemini (GUSD) operate under that framework, and Circle's USDC reserve disclosures track a similar disciple. We build the on-chain mint and burn pipeline, the off-chain reserve-management connection to bank custodians (typically BNY Mellon, State Street, or a Trust Charter institution), the monthly attestation feed for the CPA, and a public reserves dashboard with on-chain proof-of-reserves where the design supports it. For real-world asset tokenisation (Treasuries, money market funds, private credit) we work alongside Securitize, Ondo, and Maple-style structures, with the broker-dealer or transfer-agent registrations handled by your counsel.

Smart-contract security in this market is a multi-layer process, not a single audit. We write in Solidity or Vyper through Foundry, with property-based testing via Foundry invariants and Echidna, static analysis through Slither and Mythril, and continuous fuzzing in CI. Before any mainnet deployment we commission a paid audit from Trail of Bits, OpenZeppelin, ConsenSys Diligence, Spearbit, or Code4rena, and we usually run a second independent audit when TVL projections exceed USD 50M. Post-deployment we instrument Tenderly and Forta for real-time monitoring, integrate Chainalysis Crypto Incident Response on the on-chain side, and run a documented incident playbook with pre-positioned multisig signers from your Safe. We assume an SDNY or SEC inquiry could follow any major exploit, and the documentation is built for that audience from week one.

We default to AWS us-east-1 in Northern Virginia for primary workloads, with us-east-2 in Ohio as the tested disaster recovery region, because that is the standard NYDFS examiners and most NYC institutional counterparties expect. For globally distributed reads we add CloudFront and Cloudflare. Hot infrastructure (matching engine state, custody signing surface, KYC PII) stays in US regions only; analytical workloads can run in Snowflake on AWS US East. We follow NYDFS Part 500 cybersecurity requirements (the November 2023 amendment tightened MFA, asset inventory, and CISO certification rules), keep an SOC 2 Type II posture from day one, and maintain a 72-hour breach notification capability into NYDFS and a 4-day cyber-disclosure capability into the SEC under the 2023 Item 1.05 of Form 8-K rules for public-company clients.