EU Lawmakers Back Regulation Threatening Unhosted Crypto Wallets, Defi Space
Members of the European Parliament have approved a controversial regulation that could undermine the decentralized finance (defi) sector in the EU. Some of its provisions, which are yet to be coordinated with other European institutions, aim to introduce restrictive measures for transactions involving privately managed crypto wallets. EU Parliament Moves to Introduce Verification for Defi Wallets The European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) supported on Thursday the Transfer of Funds Regulation (TFR). Among other provisions, the TFR obliges crypto....
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The proposed legislation would require exchanges to verify personal data behind any transaction. Less than a week after a potential ban on Proof-of-Work (PoW) digital assets was dropped from the EU’s prospective MiCA framework, a new threat to the crypto industry could be emerging in the European Union. This time, it is non-custodial, or unhosted, wallets that are in regulators’ crosshairs.On Thursday, March 31, the European Parliament Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs will vote on an anti-money laundering (AML) regulatory package that seeks to revise the current Transfer of Funds....
“There is not good evidence that unhosted wallets present a disproportionate risk of being used in illicit finance,” said the Treasury update. The government of the United Kingdom said it intends to modify a proposal that would have required crypto firms to collect personal data from individuals holding unhosted wallets that were the recipients of digital asset transfers.In its Amendments to the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds updated on Wene, HM Treasury said it will be scaling back its requirements for gathering data from both the senders and recipients of....
Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic seem to be nervous about people transacting with their wallets. Last week, the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) and the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) voted in favor of a regulatory update that could compromise the exchange platforms’ ability to deal with noncustodial crypto wallets. Should the regulatory project make it to the legislation phase in the upcoming months, it would place severe disclosure requirements on transactions between noncustodial wallets and crypto exchanges....
“Indeed, cash poses a greater challenge to law enforcement than cryptocurrency in unhosted wallets," wrote Judge Zia Faruqui in an opinion on a forfeiture case.
Tentative clampdowns coming from both the Treasury and the House in the United States lead this week's Law Decoded. Every Friday, Law Decoded delivers analysis on the week’s critical stories in the realms of policy, regulation and law. Editor's noteFor several weeks, rumors have circulated in the United States that the Treasury Department under Steven Mnuchin is planning some sort of rulemaking to ban or severely restrict self-hosted cryptocurrency wallets.The Treasury hasn’t made any public statements to support these rumors, but they are persistent and pervasive enough to be worth paying....