European Union legislators moved Friday, December 15th to impose tighter controls on the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, through trading exchanges and related businesses.
The European Union updated its landmark 2015 legislation, Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive, to include Bitcoin and related cryptocurrency businesses including wallets and exchanges after its two-year-old creation requiring company owners to register for easier access by EU authorities. The lawmakers claimed the drafted legislation was in direct response to terrorist attacks in Brussels and Paris over the last two years.
The European Union Commissioner for Justice Věra Jourová, stated the following: “Today’s agreement will bring more transparency to improve the prevention of money laundering and to cut off terrorist financing.”
According to Reuters, “Bitcoin exchange platforms and ‘wallet’ providers that hold Bitcoin for clients will be required to identify their users, under the new rules which now must be formally adopted by EU states and European legislators and then turned into national laws.”
Deutsche Welle detailed the legislation in five parts:
“Requires platforms that transfer bitcoin and ‘wallet’ providers that hold cryptocurrencies for clients to identify users; Limits use of pre-paid payment cards; Raises transparency requirements for company and trust owners; Allows national investigators more access to information, including national bank account registers; Grants access to data on the beneficiaries of trusts to ‘persons who can demonstrate a legitimate interest,’ the publication wrote.
Earlier this month the UK Treasury announced plans to regulate Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that also stated cryptocurrency traders would be forced to disclose their identities and report suspicious activity. While committee member John Mann said that the new rules will also be applied across European Union countries and “are expected to come into force by the end of the year or early in 2018, the minister in charge has said.”
This also comes after Ewald Nowotny, the current president and governor of Austria’s central bank, the National Bank of Austria (NBA), and a member of the European Central Bank’s governing council, stated at a conference in Florence, Italy in November that central bankers and legislators in Europe are looking into cryptocurrency regulations.
So seeing the news that the EU has decided to push to impose legislation against cryptocurrency should come as no surprise to cryptocurrency enthusiasts.
Bitcoin is currently trading at [FIAT: $19,902.40] about to hit the 20K milestone according to Coin Market Cap at the time of this report.
Want an edge in the crypto markets? Subscribe to our free newsletter. Follow Coinivore on Facebook, at Twitter and Steemit.