De Nederlandsche Bank NV — the Dutch central bank — has registered about 20 crypto exchanges in the country but is no closer to determining the number of cryptocurrency investors in the country. According to Dutch online news service Nu.nl, regulators like DNB and the Autoriteit Financiële Markten, or AFM, as well as the investor group Vereniging Van Effectenbezitters, or VEB are unsure of the crypto ownership demographic in the Netherlands. Since late 2020, Dutch authorities began enforcing the European Union’s Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive with significant implications for crypto businesses. Under the AMLD-5 paradigm, the De Nederlandsche Bank has …

There is often a perceived tension between regulation and innovation. A pervasive narrative has emerged that these two important parts of our society are at odds with each other. In reality, it’s when these two come together as partners that we can effect change and transform our world for the better. Nowhere is this more true than in the blockchain industry. Over the last few months, we’ve seen seemingly reactionary regulators in different parts of the world try to formulate new rules and guidance in silos, without sufficient input from the key stakeholders most knowledgeable about the technology — the …

The banks are out of the bag: In a Tweet on Wednesday, Stani Kulechov, co-founder of decentralized finance money market protocol Aave, revealed that the Aave protocol has built a “private pool” for institutions to “practice” before getting involved with the DeFi ecosystem. Earlier on Wednesday, a Twitter user posted an angry tweet directed at Aave’s official Twitter account, noting that his address had been “blacklisted” due to Anti-Money Laundering requirements: Yo. WHAT THE FUCK @AaveAave $AAVE? pic.twitter.com/xKnaG7Idya — HMS RΞΞpΞr (@Fernjosh1) May 12, 2021 Kulechov himself responded to the tweet, saying first that there had been a mistake and …

Crypto.com — the creator of a cryptocurrency exchange, wallet, debit card program and crypto app — is strengthening its compliance toolkit by implementing a commercial solution developed by crypto intelligence firm CipherTrace. CipherTrace's tool, called Traveler, takes its name from being designed to meet the complex requirements of the Financial Action Task Force's so-called “Travel Rule,” which came into effect for Virtual Asset Service Providers, or VASPs, in 2020. The FATF's Travel Rule requires regulators and VASPs — including crypto exchanges, custody providers and over-the-counter trading desks — to gather and share customer data during transactions. This approach broadly follows …

A blockchain network delivers unlimited scalability and a record-breaking 100,000 transactions per second — features that could transform the way this technology is used. ParallelChain, developed by Hong Kong-based blockchain startup Digital Transaction Limited, says it is the only blockchain platform in the market that has successfully solved the three major pain points of first-generation blockchains with no compromise: Scalability, speed, and security. Its speed is probably the most significant of the three. At 100,000 TPS, ParallelChain is four times faster than Visa’s capability of 24,000 TPS. It is also much faster than other blockchains such as Polkadot, Cardano and …

Fintech, cryptocurrency and mergers and acquisitions are poised to intersect significantly in the coming year. M&A activity is expected to rebound quickly — more than 60% of decision-makers at large companies who were surveyed by FTI Consulting for a February report agree that their company has recently been a target of aggressive M&A, and 39% say their companies are looking at M&A as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, the cryptocurrency market is making strides toward mainstream acceptance. As a result, there’s likely to be an uplift in deals involving cryptocurrency assets and valuations throughout 2021. …

Dubai’s Department of Economic Development, or “Dubai Economy,” and the Dubai International Financial Centre are working to expand their Know Your Customer platform to financial institutions across the United Arab Emirates. The DIFC made the planned project expansion known via an announcement published on its website on April 6. According to the communique, both organizations have signed an agreement to put the necessary modalities in place to extend the KYC platform across the UAE. The project was first announced back in February 2020, with 120 companies onboarded as of July 2020, according to a Cointelegraph report at the time. The …

Over the last 12 months, the remarkable growth in decentralized finance has been driven by one thing: the ability of users to earn strong yields on their crypto assets by lending, staking and providing liquidity. Depending on your risk appetite, gains from DeFi investments can run tens or even hundreds of times higher than standard returns in the traditional markets. Even if those kinds of yields don’t last forever, DeFi offers significant promise to transform the financial markets in the long term. At the start of this year, former U.S. acting comptroller of the currency Brian Brooks predicted (I think, …

During 2017’s bull market, most crypto services lacked the proper Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering measures. Even in 2020, 56% of the analyzed 800 cryptocurrency exchanges and over-the-counter trading desks followed weak KYC practices, according to a CipherTrace report. However, the current digital asset rally has turned the crypto market upside down. As a result, KYC and AML have become top priorities for cryptocurrency providers, with many industry players rushing to implement proper measures to better know their customers. And it’s not just the providers that are increasingly demanding KYC, but also their clients. This trend began in January …

Japan has made another step toward adopting cryptocurrency Anti-Money Laundering regulations developed by the Financial Action Task Force, Cointelegraph Japan reports. The Japanese Financial Services Agency announced Wednesday that it will adopt the FATF’s Travel Rule — a set of regulations requiring virtual asset service providers to share transaction data for senders and recipients — by April 2022. “It is required to introduce and implement the Travel Rule regulations in each country,” the FSA noted. The FSA requested the Japanese Virtual Currency Exchange Association, a local self-regulatory crypto organization, to prepare for the implementation of the Travel Rule: “From the …

From real-name account trading to investigating individuals using cryptocurrencies to evade taxes, government officials in South Korea are enacting stricter regulations to oversee the cryptocurrency industry in the country. These measures often require digital currency businesses to provide detailed customer data and transaction information to the relevant authorities. With these stringent measures often comes an increase in the cost of compliance for exchanges and other crypto service providers. Privacy concerns are another issue amid the swath of information being provided to government agencies. However, this strict regulatory climate has done little to dampen the enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies in South Korea. …

South Korea is heading into a new period for its crypto industry, with stringent new rules coming into effect on Thursday that will require all cryptocurrency businesses to comply with new crypto reporting regulations and registration rules. As an article from the Korea Herald outlines, industry experts fear that the impact of the new measures — specifically, the incoming Specific Financial Transactions Act — will have damaging consequences for most domestic cryptocurrency firms. The act requires all virtual asset operators to seek official registration, for which they must show evidence that they are operating using real-name accounts at South Korean …