More than 50 companies dealing in cryptocurrencies could be forced to shut after failing to comply with UK anti-money laundering rules.
The City watchdog said an “unprecedented number” of crypto firms are withdrawing applications from a temporary permit scheme that allowed companies to continue trading while their applications were being assessed.
The Financial Conduct Authority said: “A significantly high number of businesses are not meeting the required standards under the money laundering regulations resulting in an unprecedented number of businesses withdrawing their applications.”
All those know your customer, know their source of funds etc rules.
Not that I think that Bitcoin et al are the new revolution but it’s being strangled by bureaucracy all the same.
Its weird that banks are constantly on their customers backs to prove who they are, even people who have been customers for generations with the same bank, yet all these fraudsters who ring up old ladies and get them to transfer all their money to the fraudsters account seem to be totally unaffected by all this money laundering guff. Its almost as if it is aimed entirely at the legitimate customer and the criminals are left free to do what they want.
@jim
Probably because proper crims have all the paperwork (after all they probably make it themselves) and normal people struggle to find the ID that they put somewhere safe
Who processes the applications? It won’t be an experienced in estimator with a nose for the unusual. It will be a boxticking minimum wage call centre slabe
*in estimator=investigator!
If fifty crypto companies quit the UK market, mightn’t that make quite a dent in the value of crypto assets? Hard to sustain valuations if a big chunk of your buyers are removed from the market.
Football’s euros are starting soon, so erstwhile crypto “investors” might find their attentions (and cash) clicking on BetFred rather than BitCoin.
Surely, isn’t this excellent news? The idea of a cryptocurrency is that it should be an alternative medium of exchange to government money. Parallel, but separate. It’s been the interface between fiat & crypto produced the ridiculous situation of crypto being regarded as “investments”. The interface, if any, should be via the purchase & sale of goods & services.
“More than 50 companies dealing in cryptocurrencies could be forced to shut after failing to comply with UK anti-money laundering rules. ”
That cryptocurrencies facilitate money laundering is rather the point isn’t it? That’s what cryptocurrencies are for. Making your transactions Persil.
BIS
yes. Bitcoin now too valuable to be used as a medium of exchange, so it has failed a key element of what makes a currency.
“doing business in the UK”?
What’s to stop me dealing with a company in Kyrgyzstan with my Bitcoin? Or Peru? Or Somalia?
All of this bollocks only exists because the bollocks that is the War on Drugs and the pantomime sold to the public that they can find the “Mr Bigs” behind it, as if someone else won’t take their place. God knows how much human effort is wasted by both police and money launderers.
The idea of a cryptocurrency is that it should be an alternative medium of exchange to government money.
It was doomed from the start, then. They’ll never allow it.
And in that case, the sooner it’s banned the better. Then the rest of us can get and afford computer parts.
Crypto is fundamentally different from normal financial transactions in that it is both completely open and completely private. So imagine a bank account where anyone can see all the transactions but it is impossible to work out, from the transaction data alone, who the account belongs to. So all the authorities have to do is crack the second problem and then they can see absolutely everything you’ve been up to. You would have to be certifiably insane to use this for anything even remotely criminal.
Far too much respect for “law”. Golden rules are one thing–don’t be doing to others what you don’t want done to you. Fine.
But grovelling to every word that comes out of the states evil arse? NO.
Covenants again. People get together and agree to what law they will accept. A golden rule based Covenant will find wide acceptance.
For anything outside that Covenant the answer should be NO FUCK OFF. Of course the Covenant would need to be defended against the state’s evil attacks. But the mere existence of such Covenants would show each state the doom on the wall.
Sooner or later the nation-state will need to be replaced and not by one world social credit tyranny as political shite currently plan.
Brilliant by Bloke on M4:
Cryptos could be undermined a little if private gun ownership was legal in more places, brothel operating was decriminalised and asset forfeiture was declared unconstitutional without a conviction. But they would be smashed if the War on Drugs was ended.
@Bill
Government can see everything you’ve been up to simply by asking your bank