According to a notice of proposed rulemaking published on Friday, the US agencies want to lower the $3,000 threshold established in 1995 to $250 for international transactions, meaning that financial institutions would need to exchange client information alongside all crypto transactions greater than $250 that begin or end outside of the United States. Which is to say, the FATF proposed Travel Rule, as it is known, would apply to relatively small amounts of money changing hands.
Crypto exchanges would need to reveal information about their users.
The information that financial institutions need to exchange under the travel rule would be the name and address of the originator or transmittor, the amount of the payment or transmittal order, and the payment or transmittal order’s execution date. The other information that crypto exchanges would need to reveal would be any payment instructions received from the originator or transmittor with the payment or transmittal order and the beneficiary’s bank or recipient’s financial institution’s identity. This means that a crypto exchange would then need to store quite a lot of personal information alongside a user’s account.
Regulators continue to enforce FATF guidelines.
The Financial Action Task Force is working to apply a similar rule across countries, which has proven highly controversial within the crypto world. The mandate to collect and exchange customer information seems diametrically opposed to the “peer-to-peer electronic cash system” that the whitepaper for Bitcoin presented. For now, the update to the Travel Rule remains just a proposal. FinCEN and the Fed are inviting public comments from all concerned over the next 30 days. Several countries around the world have already enforced FATF guidelines on cryptocurrencies. However, crypto regulations in most countries still remain in a grey area.
