European Banking Authority wants to include crypto in guidelines on money laundering and terrorism

[ad_1]

The European Banking Authority wants to extend the scope of its guidelines on money laundering and terrorist financing risk factors to crypto-asset service providers.

The European Union’s financial regulator argued in a consultation published Wednesday that these guidelines should include warnings about transactions with self-hosted crypto addresses and crypto service providers that fall outside the regulatory scope of the MiCA rules. incoming.

In a summary of the consultation, the EBA explains that this amendment is not necessarily intended to put Crypto Asset Service Providers (CASPs) in the spotlight, but to make them aware of the risks associated with their business model and help them mitigate these risks.

Amendments introduce new sector guidance for PSAPs, which highlights factors that may indicate upside or downside PSAP exposure [money laundering and terrorist financing] risk, wrote the EBA.

Other risks associated with crypto service providers mentioned by the European regulator concerned products that exchange cryptocurrencies for fiat currency and users who are on the darknet or involved in crypto mining in jurisdictions at high risk.

The summary continued, PSAPs should consider these factors when conducting the [money laundering and terrorist financing] risk assessments of their business and their customers at the start and during the business relationship. The Guidelines also explain how they should adapt their customer due diligence (CDD) to these risks.

The consultation also wants European authorities to provide additional risk guidance to financial institutions looking to do business with crypto companies.

The deadline to submit comments on the consultation is August 31, 2023.

As crypto becomes more mainstream, government agencies more often seek the opinions of crypto companies on policy issues. For example, the UK released a proposal in February 2023 that covered regulations on NTFs, bitcoin mining, and stablecoins. Many companies responded in the UK with agreement, criticism and suggestions, including Binance, a16z, Polygon, Circle and 21Shares.

Hong Kong is another place that has had a consultation period for digital asset regulation, leading the city-state to allow crypto trading for retail investors.

Get the best crypto news and insights delivered to your inbox every night. Subscribe to Blockworks’ free newsletter now.

Want the alpha sent straight to your inbox? Get degenerate business insights, governance updates, token performance, can’t-miss tweets and more with Blockworks Researchs daily debrief.

Can’t wait? Receive our news as soon as possible. Join us on Telegram and follow us on Google News.

[ad_2]