Ah, New York: If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere, but to even try, you need a license. Luckily, SoFi and Coinbase just got theirs.

After waiting a year, the lender SoFi received the thumbs up to operate in New York, CFO Michael Tannenbaum said recently. The Empire State is forecast to be SoFi’s #2 market someday, after California. SoFi, officially Social Finance, got its start refinancing student loans, but has expanded into other areas of lending, most notably mortgages. In November, the lender inked a deal with Fannie Mae in November to allow homeowners to pay down their student loans along with their mortgages.

Coinbase also got the green light from New York state regulators yesterday in the form of just the third BitLicense ever granted. Ripple got the second. Circle picked up the first in Sept. 2o15, and essentially exited the cryptocurrency in Dec. 2016.

Why so few? Maybe because bitlicenses are estimated to cost $100,000 a pop. New York State has also granted charters to the exchanges Gemini Trust and ItBit.

Coinbase has been operating in New York under what CoinDesk called a safe-harbor provision, but now has official clearance. It also has Circle’s business, but that apparently did not include the latter’s BitLicense.

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