United States Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin shares President Donald Trump’s concerns on the use of cryptocurrency to finance illicit activity, and stresses the role of enforcing FinCEN regulations with respect to crypto-dealing organizations. Mnuchin made his remarks at a press conference on July 15. Mnuchin called the use of cryptocurrencies to fund illicit activity a national security issue, saying that billions of dollars have been used for this purpose: “Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have been exploited to support billions of dollars of illicit activity, like cybercrime, tax evasion, extortion, randomware, illicit drugs, human trafficking […] This is indeed a national …

Bank of England governor Mark Carney said that people need to acknowledge the issues Facebook is attempting to solve with Libra, regardless of the project’s potential downsides. Carney delivered his remarks at the Financial Stability Report press conference as seen on the Bank of England’s YouTube channel on July 11. Carney said: “It’s way too expensive to do domestic payments. It’s way too slow, and that hurts consumers and businesses. It stifles innovation, and it’s far too expensive to send money cross-border, and there are huge financial inclusion issues related to that and costs related to that. So, while we …

Spanish law enforcement pointed out that Bitcoin (BTC) automated teller machines (ATMs) show a gap in European Union’s Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations, Bloomberg reports on July 11. Per the report, Spanish police uncovered a local gang that used Bitcoin ATMs to transfer more than 9 million euros ($10 million) for drug traffickers in Colombia and other countries. Bloomberg cites anonymous representatives of Guardia Civil (a type of Spanish law enforcement) alleging that the group hired two machines from trading platforms and installed them in an office in Madrid. The office in question masqueraded as a center for remittances and cryptocurrency …

Facebook’s unveiling of its Libra cryptocurrency has generated a lot of attention in the financial world, as well as in the crypto space. So far, the company has announced that its Libra blockchain network will be launched in 2020 and backed by a separate entity, the Libra Foundation. The cryptocurrency is set to enable users to make faster and cheaper international payments online, using platforms such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger. The Libra currency Just like any other cryptocurrency, Libra is set to have its own wallet called Calibra. Users would be able to send and receive Libra through this …

Cryptocurrency exchanges in Canada will be legally required to register with the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FinTRAC) as of June 1, 2020, according to a notice published on July 10. This requirement will come into effect along with other amendments to Canada’s new Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws next year. Crypto exchanges will also reportedly be required to observe Know Your Customer policies and report any suspicious transactions to the Canadian watchdog; this also includes keeping records of their clients and hiring a compliance officer for their platform. A report by The Globe and Mail notes that …

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said there needs to be broad satisfaction with the way Facebook is handling regulatory concerns regarding its forthcoming stablecoin Libra. Powell gave his comments in a hearing before the House Financial Services Committee on July 10. Rep. Steve Stivers asked Powell during the meeting, “if Facebook can’t sufficiently answer your questions about anti-money laundering, Know Your Customer, what would your message be to the banks that provide banking to Facebook, and what would your advice to Facebook be?” Powell replied: “ … I just think it cannot go forward without there being broad satisfaction with …

“Travel rule” was a term frequently heard at the V-20 Summit, which took place in parallel with the G-20 meeting in Osaka, Japan from June 28 to 29. Regulators and Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) — such as exchanges from different countries — met in Osaka for two days and discussed how to implement the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) latest guidance on how to prevent cryptocurrencies being used for money laundering. The travel rule requires VASPs to collect and transfer customer information during transactions. While its objective is to protect consumers, it is controversial from both technological and philosophical …

Dutch ministers have urged the government to regulate cryptocurrencies and certain cash payments over money laundering concerns in a statement on July 1. The officials said that the government should ban cash payments over 3,000 euros, regulate cryptocurrencies and ban 500 euro banknotes, as these instruments can purportedly facilitate money laundering. The Netherlands do not recognize cryptocurrency as a legal currency, although last year a Dutch court found bitcoin (BTC) to be a legitimate “transferable value” in a penalty payment case. According to the statement, Minister of Finance Wopke Hoekstra and Minister of Justice and Security Ferdinand Grapperhaus sent the …

Regulation technology startup Coinfirm will investigate how cryptocurrency Ripple (XRP) is being used, Forbes reported on June 26. San Francisco-based tech startup Ripple, which is largely behind XRP, has signed an agreement with Coinfirm, wherein the latter will explore XRP's compliance with anti-money laundering (AML) provisions. Within the investigation, Coinfirm will reveal information such as whether XRP has been processed by a "mixer" — a technology developed to make transactions more difficult to trace and therefore easier to launder crypto — clustering, which enables a user to send small amounts of currency through many different addresses — as well as …

Bank of France Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau said that Facebook’s Libra stablecoin must comply with anti-money laundering regulation and seek banking licenses if it offers banking services, Reuters reports on June 25. Per the report, while Villeroy admitted during an interview with French magazine l’Obs that there was room to improve cross-border money transfers. He also pointed out that Facebook’s libra project has to comply existing banking regulation because “the risks are increased by the anonymity that Libra users would have.” Villeroy also touched on possible requirements for a banking license: “If the project seeks to go beyond payments …

Stablecoins have become rather frequently discussed in the news and social media over the past few weeks, especially with the news of the release of the Facebook-backed Libra coin. The current wave of stablecoin issuance could be attributed to the lack of liquidity in the cryptocurrency world. But even though the crypto market is now slowly recovering from a long bear trend, the ecosystem of stablecoins continues to expand even further. One of the most notable events in the stablecoin space was a recent announcement by Circle and Coinbase. After launching its own digital dollar — called USD Coin (USDC) …

Today’s Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) announcement focused on digital currency’s role in money laundering and heightened regulation, as Secretary Steven Mnuchin noted in his closing remarks. The FATF — an intergovernmental organization that focuses its efforts on fighting money laundering — is planning to strengthen control over cryptocurrency exchanges to preclude digital currencies from being used in money laundering and related crimes. U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin said that the new measure will require that crypto assets service providers comply with anti-money laundering (AML) and combating the financing of terrorism (CFT) procedures in the same way traditional …