TL;DR Breakdown
- China to crackdown on NFT, Metaverse.
- PBOC director says both techs can’t be left unregulated.
- Suggest ways to make crypto transactions easily monitorable.
An executive of China’s apex bank, People’s Bank of China (PBOC), has said hinted that the bank is coming for metaverse and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) after cryptocurrencies.
Gou Wenjun, director of the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) unit at the PBoC, gave a hint while speaking at the national financial security summit.
Gou stated that it is too much risk to leave the new trend in the crypto space unregulated. According to him, although some people use digital assets as a means of storing and adding wealth at, they could also be used for illicit purposes such as money laundering and tax evasion.
The AML director of the PBOC said that with how fast crypto innovation grows, high-risk supervision means and governance needs to be adopted. He suggested that the isolated nature of crypto, NFTs, and metaverse-based items from the real world can be used as a money-laundering tool.
Gou China’s PBOC AML director suggest ways to improve transparency of crypto transactions
While speaking, Gou suggested objective ways to improve the transparency of virtual asset transactions. He called on regulators to strengthen the monitoring and analysis of digital asset transactions and called banks and payment service providers that provide fiat-to-crypto gateways should authenticate senders and receivers with real names while improving the ability to identify suspicious transactions.
Gou also suggested improved applications and technologies be provided to establish traceability and a sense of tracking of these transactions. Such a system would apply artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other technologies to label accounts that transact with probed addresses, he suggested.
In conclusion, the China bank AML director called for improved cooperation within regulators and financial intelligence agencies to form an international coalition to fight crypto-related crimes.
He said his office would keep deepening information sharing and co-investigation cooperation with other overseas financial intelligence agencies.
