- FinCEN mandates crypto exchange firm to gather more user information
- Transactions worth over $250 to be scrutinized
The United States Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and Federal Reserves published a new notice on Friday. They stated they want to lessen the threshold to $250 for international transactions.
These new regulations require that all financial organizations share their clients’ information and all of the transactions in crypto that are above $250, mostly for transactions that begin or end in the United States.
This Financial Action Task Force (FATF) proposed a new Travel Rule, mandating the financial institution to exchange such data with the federal agencies even for small transactions.
FinCEN and its sister agency, Federal Reserve, would require the institution to share information like the name and address of whoever initiates the transaction, the amount on the transaction, and the date of execution of the payment. Other required information from the financial institution is any instructions attached to the payment order and the receivers’ bank.
According to this new rule, FINCEN ensures that the crypto exchange companies are storing quite a lot of information about their users on their database.
FinCEN looks to enforce new regulations.
The FATF is looking at the possibility of enforcing these new guidelines, or a similar one, in countries with high cases of controversy in their dealings with cryptocurrency.
This new mandate stands at the extreme to what the white paper of Bitcoin had proposed. Bitcoin white paper had looked to keep users private and away from the limelight, but this new regulation would be forcing the exchange companies to gather information about their users.
Though presently, the guidelines are only still being proposed, FINCEN and its sister agencies are consulting the public and requesting inputs from all of those who might be affected by this new rule. The consultation would be open for the next 30 days.
