The EU plans to restrict private crypto wallets

On Tuesday, the European Commission revealed a proposal that would ban the use of "anonymous cryptocurrency wallets" as part of its fight against financial crimes.

Anti-money laundering and crime-fighting regulations

The proposal would extend EU anti-money laundering and terrorist financing (AML / CFT) rules to the cryptocurrency sector, the Commission said, because "only certain categories of cryptocurrency service providers" are currently subject to them. .

"Today's amendments will ensure full traceability of cryptocurrency transfers, such as Bitcoin," the European Commission said, "and will allow for the prevention and detection of their possible use for money laundering or terrorist financing".

This announcement came shortly after British police announced the seizure of around $ 408 million worth of cryptocurrency as part of an ongoing money laundering investigation. There are probably similar operations in the EU and other regions.

More information on the changes is available in the latest revision of Regulation 2015/847 / EU. Many of the changes simply make specific references to cryptographic assets in existing regulations without applying further changes.

Less anonymity for crypto-wallet holders?

There are some noteworthy additions, however, such as requiring "other means of ensuring that the cryptocurrency transfer can be identified individually and that sender and payee address identifiers are recorded on the distributed ledger" for transactions without of traditional payment account numbers and identifiers.

The review also stated that “the requirements of this regulation should apply to crypto-asset service providers whenever their transactions [...] involve a traditional bank wire or crypto-asset transfer involving a crypto-asset service provider. crypto-assets ".

These requirements include the following:

"The originator's crypto-asset service provider should ensure that crypto-asset transfers are accompanied by the transferor's name, the transferor's account number, if such an account exists and is used to process the transaction, and the address of the transferor, official personal document number, customer identification number or date and place of birth. In addition, the originator's crypto-asset service provider should also ensure that crypto-asset transfers are accompanied by the beneficiary's name and the beneficiary's account number, if such an account exists and is used to process the transaction. "

Similar requests were made to the beneficiary's service provider, but in the opposite direction. (Which means that such service providers are required to ensure that all relevant information has been provided by the transferor's service provider.)

The BBC reported that the proposal must be approved by EU member states and the European Parliament before it can become law. This process could take up to two years, according to the report, which gives people some time to prepare for the changes. And what do you think of this EU proposal? Let us know in the comments section below.