European Union states and legislators have reached an agreement to implement stricter regulation to prevent money laundering and terrorism financing activities through cryptocurrency exchanges, Reuters reported.
The legislative proposals were put forward by the European Commission following the bombing attacks in Paris and Brussels in 2015 and 2016. It took legislators over a year to agree on the proposals.
The measures, among other things, are aimed at ending anonymity of digital currency transactions and pre-paid payment cards. The investigators believe that the anonymity feature could have been used by terrorist groups to fund the attacks.
“Today’s agreement will bring more transparency to improve the prevention of money laundering and to cut off terrorist financing,” Europe’s Justice Commissioner Věra Jourová said.
Under the new measures, bitcoin exchanges and wallet providers would be required to identify their users.
“The rules will now apply to entities which provide services that are in charge of holding, storing and transferring virtual currencies, to persons who provide similar kinds of services to those provided by auditors, external accountants and tax advisors which are already subject to the 4th Anti-Money Laundering directive and to persons trading in works of art. These new actors will have to identify their customers and report any suspicious activity to the Financial Intelligence Units,” according to the factsheet.
The new rules will be adopted by EU member and subsequently turned into national laws within 18 months.
