Bringing closure to the long-awaited judgment related to the money laundering activities over the BitMEX crypto exchange, one of the four federal district courthouses in New York reportedly sentenced two-year probation and six months of home detention to founder and ex-CEO Arthur Hayes. Arthur Hayes, along with the other BitMEX co-founders Benjamin Delo and Samuel Reed, and the company’s first non-employee Gregory Dwyer, pleaded guilty to the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) violations on Feb 24, admitting to “willfully failing to establish, implement, and maintain an anti-money laundering (“AML”) program at BitMEX.” Pleading guilty to supporting money laundering is a punishable …

Europe’s Anti-Money Laundering and Combatting the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) watchdog, MONEYVAL, has listed monitoring the crypto sector along with “gatekeeper” professionals, such as lawyers and accountants, as priorities in European nations' push to combat money laundering. In a media release based on the findings of its annual report, MONEYVAL called upon European jurisdictions to assess compliance with international standards and implement stricter regulatory policies to combat money laundering facilitated by crypto assets. Elżbieta Frankow-Jaśkiewicz, chief of MONEVYAL, cited the Pandora Papers as an example of how professionals serving as "gatekeepers" could aid the rich and corrupt to launder their …

Governments around the globe have also become more aware of the crypto market and the various ways in which it can be regulated. Despite a growing adoption rate and involvement of mainstream financial giants, however, naysayers continue to portray crypto as a tool for miscreants and criminals. Several crypto platforms and decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols have been compromised over the years, owing to various code vulnerabilities or centralization problems. However, stealing of money is the easiest part, while moving that money and cashing it out is nearly impossible. This is primarily because most crypto transactions are recorded on a public …

Major crypto exchange Binance challenged the accuracy of a report, which stated one of its regional heads agreed to supply Russia's financial intelligence unit with customer data potentially related to donations for anti-corruption and anti-Putin activist Alexei Navalny. Reuters reported on Friday that Binance's head of Eastern Europe and Russia Gleb Kostarev met with officials from Russia's Rosfinmonitoring, a financial monitoring service linked to the country's Federal Security Service, or FSB, in April 2021. Kostarev reportedly agreed to a request from the government body to turn over certain user data — including names and addresses — later telling an associate …

The United States Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, or OCC, has said it intends to pursue cease and desist proceedings against cryptocurrency custody bank Anchorage Digital for violating certain Anti-Money Laundering (AML) requirements. In a Thursday announcement, the OCC said it issued a consent order against Anchorage Digital based on its “failure to adopt and implement a compliance program” in accordance with the required Bank Secrecy Act, or BSA, and AML standards. The government bureau said such actions placed Anchorage Digital in violation of its operating agreement with the OCC, established in January 2021. “The OCC holds all …

Bitcoin (BTC) dipped below $40,000 support on April 18, and the two-week 15% correction was enough to prompt predictions of $30,000 prices in the near term. Meanwhile, regulatory uncertainties continue to be a key concern for investors, including the failed European Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) proposed rules for ”unhosted” private wallets. For instance, exchanges started to demand additional information on their users just last week, causing some discomfort to traders. Europe regulation “near miss” brings distress The European Union Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs voted on March 14 to ban or restrict proof-of-work-based crypto …

Why is wash trading a problem for the NFT space? NFT wash trading is a problem for investors, the global community, collectors and traders because these participants use less liquid nonfungible tokens to manipulate the price of an asset. Due diligence has become more difficult as investors have been forced to rely on measurable statistics, making wrong investment decisions. To encourage NFT investments and prevent NFT scams, discrepancies in the data must be investigated by specialists. Additionally, NFT crimes hit the NFT community the hardest. Regulators and proponents of mainstream financial services can now use wash trading to combat decentralization. …

Major global cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp continues increasing compliance efforts by requesting its users to provide more data like their source of wealth. In an email notification to users on Wednesday, Bitstamp informed its customers about the ongoing policy upgrades on the platform, with the exchange seeking additional info about its clients, one Bitstamp user told Cointelegraph. The email reads: “We work closely with our regulatory partners to ensure we continue to be your trusted exchange. Towards this, we need your account information to be updated, to provide you with the latest products and crypto assets.” Bitstamp specifically requested users to …

The European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs recently approved a draft of its comprehensive Markets in Crypto Assets, or MiCA, crypto regulation package. The new framework covers a wide range of crypto-related subjects, such as the status of all major currencies and stablecoins and the regulation of crypto mining and exchange platforms. Stefan Berger, a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), is the Parliament’s rapporteur for the upcoming MiCA regulation — the person appointed to report on proceedings related to the bill. In the associated negotiations, the German politician vehemently opposed, among other things, a ban on …

Cryptocurrency mixers have been an interesting topic of discussion ever since the advent of cryptocurrencies and their adoption by retail investors around the world. Cryptocurrency mixers are services that essentially focus on one feature of a blockchain network: privacy. Cryptocurrency mixers, also known as tumblers, provide anonymity so no one can trace the sender or receiver of a transaction. This can help protect the identity of individuals who want to be completely anonymous and non-traceable. How cryptocurrency mixers work is that they break down the funds sent using the mixer and scramble them with other transactions. They break the link …

Last week, the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) and the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) voted in favor of a regulatory update that could compromise the exchange platforms’ ability to deal with noncustodial crypto wallets. Should the regulatory project make it to the legislation phase in the upcoming months, it would place severe disclosure requirements on transactions between noncustodial wallets and crypto exchanges in the European Union — a process whose signs are visible in other parts of the globe as well. What happened On Thursday, March 31, ECON and LIBE members …

Less than a week after a potential ban on Proof-of-Work (PoW) digital assets was dropped from the EU’s prospective MiCA framework, a new threat to the crypto industry could be emerging in the European Union. This time, it is non-custodial, or unhosted, wallets that are in regulators’ crosshairs. On Thursday, March 31, the European Parliament Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs will vote on an anti-money laundering (AML) regulatory package that seeks to revise the current Transfer of Funds Regulation (TFR) in a way that extends the requirement of financial institutions to attach information on the transacting parties to crypto …