Cryptocurrency firms in Singapore can now draw upon detailed guidance for their license applications to offer regulated services in the city-state. On Aug. 13, the Association of Cryptocurrency Enterprises and Startups, Singapore (ACCESS), rolled out its new Code of Practice to help these firms in their applications for a payments service license. The license has been mandatory for any entity looking to provide specified payment services — including digital payments and the trading of digital tokens — since Singapore’s Payment Services Act came into force in January of this year. ACCESS had the support of the Monetary Authority of Singapore …

In June 2019, the intergovernmental Financial Action Task Force (FATF) introduced its revised set of standards for virtual asset service providers. The document establishes the anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism (AML/CFT) requirements that regulated VASPs — the term mainly referring to cryptocurrency trading platforms — must eventually implement in their day-to-day operations. The guidelines are framed as recommendations, and the FATF leaves it to the participating nations’ governments to develop their own regulations in accordance with suggested principles. The watchdog has also set a 12-month review timeframe to monitor the public and private sectors’ progress in putting the revised standards into …

There is no doubt that digital currencies provide benefits for an individual, a company and an institution by facilitating better access to financial products and services. Money laundering costs the global economy between $800 billion and $2 trillion annually, according to a United Nations report. This amounts to 2%–5% of the global gross domestic product. Today, more than 90% of money laundering still goes undetected. Developments in technology, however, have resulted in newer and faster tools. Criminals use these advancements to continue laundering money. At the same time, government authorities and fintech companies leverage technology to identify transaction attributes and …

FinTech company CoolBitX may have a solution for countries that have not yet complied with the Financial Action Task Force’s “travel rule”. According to a statement from CoolBitX shared with Cointelegraph on July 21, the blockchain security company announced it would be partnering with cryptocurrency forensics firm Elliptic to address anti-money laundering (AML) regulations for virtual asset service providers (VASPs) in accordance with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) travel rule. VASPs will have access to both Sygna Bridge — the solution proffered by CoolBitX — and Elliptic’s crypto transaction and wallet screening tools to comply with the travel rule’s …

A new report released on Tuesday by Crystal Blockchain attempts to categorize cross-border transactions of Bitcoin (BTC) based on their “country of origin,” which may have important implications for the Financial Action Task Force's Travel Rule. The analysts used direct exchange-to-exchange transactions and their country of incorporation to categorize Bitcoin transfers by their provenance. Despite the fact that Bitcoin is fundamentally borderless by nature, and that a country of incorporation does not fully indicate the origin of its funds, this classification is required for complying with the Travel Rule. Crystal found significant discrepancies between the countries hosting cryptocurrency exchanges and …

BitGo, one of the world’s largest Bitcoin (BTC) transaction processors, is integrating a new API into its crypto wallet service to support the Financial Action Task Force’s travel rule. BitGo told Cointelegraph on July 14 that the company is the first wallet service to provide an in-house API solution for the FATF’s Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations, known as the "travel rule." Specifically, BitGo is now extending its API endpoints to enable its clients to transfer additional transaction-related data required under the new rule. Intended to provide more transparency, the new tool is expected to enable the exchange of data about …

Contrary to popular belief, privacy is not for those with something to hide but with everything to lose. Authoritarian governments across the globe are increasingly using surveillance to control their citizens at the expense of personal freedoms and civil liberties. The privacy of one’s financial transactions is intricately linked to one’s personal liberty. Without privacy (and financial means), true freedom is at risk. We are rendered powerless to resist oppression. The promise of cryptocurrency is that it is uncensorable and unseizable money for the people. But Bitcoin (BTC), which was supposed to be like peer-to-peer digital cash, lacks privacy, which …

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has a plenary meeting scheduled on June 24 to assess the progress of Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) worldwide in enforcing the organization’s “travel rule”. According to Pawel Kuskowski at Forbes, the FATF meeting will be held virtually in two weeks to discuss the organization’s guidelines intended to make VASPs compliant with anti-money laundering (AML) and Anti-Terrorist Financing (ATF) regulations. He says FATF member jurisdictions “must demonstrate progress” on implementing the travel rule, as their efforts will be reviewed at the June 24 meeting. Background on the travel rule In June 2019, the FATF …

CoolBitX Founder Michael Ou believes regulators in Asia are leading the way when it comes to compliance with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) travel rule, which is due to be implemented in June. The startup has developed a solution to the travel rule, called Sygna Bridge, which allows exchanges to communicate the identities of the senders and receivers of each transaction. On May 7 it announced it had conducted a series of cross-border transfer tests that demonstrated Sygna Bridge’s effectiveness in complying with the FATF guidelines by verifying transactions against the names of known terrorists and drug dealers. Singapore …

Last year, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) asked global jurisdictions to adopt its anti-money laundering, or AML, guidelines for crypto. As the apparent deadline is just a few weeks away, some regulation experts believe that the deadline is not the case, while the actual adoption is a matter of years. On May 12, global legal and regulatory experts alongside executives in the crypto industry gathered at a Consensus: Distributed panel to discuss the FATF’s crypto guidelines. Travel rule’s June 2020 deadline “is a bit of a myth” At the virtual event, Siân Jones, a convener of the Joint Working …

Gibraltar’s minister for digital and financial services, Albert Isola, has announced forthcoming regulations to reduce market manipulation among blockchain firms. In an interview with The Banker published April 10, Isola also discussed his government’s decision to abandon its development of a legislative apparatus for token sales amid the bursting of the initial coin offering, or ICO, bubble. Gibraltar responds to market manipulation in DLT sector Isola states that Gibraltar’s government will introduce regulations to mitigate market manipulations in the blockchain sector “in the next few months.” The minister describes manipulation as an “increasing risk” among distributed ledger technology (DLT) companies, …

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has reevaluated the United States on its compliance with global anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CFT) regulations. According to the report published on March 31, the U.S. is only “largely compliant” with FATF regulations on cryptocurrencies and virtual assets. The assessment considered the degree of compliance of the national legislation to recommendations issued by FATF, an international regulatory standard body. Recommendation 15, dealing specifically with cryptocurrencies, is among the most discussed issues in the report. Since the last assessment in 2016, the FATF rating of the U.S. on this matter has not changed. …