Summary:
The European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON
) is reportedly planning a meeting on Thursday in which they will vote on an AML (anti-money laundering) package that will require crypto transfers to include personal information of the payer and payee.In particular, the draft proposal requires crypto service providers such as exchanges and custodians, to share personal information during each transaction that includes the name and addresses of the sender and recipient of the funds. The requirements are somewhat similar to how traditional SWIFT transactions operate.
This, in turn, means that private wallets, which allow users to own their private keys, will be at a disadvantage as crypto service providers cannot directly obtain the personal information of the owners of these wallets.
These private wallets (such as MetaMask, Trezor, MyEtherWallet and Ledger) are referred to ‘unhosted wallets’ in the draft proposal
which recommends the following procedure to obtain personal information from their owners.Furthermore, the draft proposal recommends that crypto-service providers notify AML authorities for every crypto transfer valued at over €1,000 from an ‘unhosted wallet’. Crypto-service providers are also advised to refrain from interacting with non-compliant crypto-service providers.
In summary, and if the proposal passes in the EU parliament, every crypto transaction in the European Union, will have to be accompanied by personal information of both parties.
There is, however, a potential loophole in peer-to-peer transactions that do not need a third party to process. For example, a transaction from one MetaMask wallet address to another.
[Feature image courtesy of Pixabay]