Financial Action Task Force to set out regulation on crypto-currencies

The Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has announced it is looking to setting out regulations governing business dealings with crypto-currencies in an attempt to prevent money-laundering.

According to its own website, the objectives of the FATF, an inter-governmental, policy-making body set up in 1989, “are to set standards and promote effective implementation of legal, regulatory and operational measures for combating money-laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system”.

The first proposals for regulation will be submitted to the individual states next June to ensure closer monitoring of the actions of “Bitcoin & Co”.

This will in fact be the first ever international initiative in this rapidly developing sphere of activity, affected states hitherto looking to monitoring the new technology in very different ways. In the future, those engaged in digital currency exchanges and certain providers of crypto-currencies, so-called wallets, will need a state licence before they can operate and be subject to legal regulation. And the same applies to those engaged in Initial Coin Offerings.

Those states which decline to implement the new regulations will be put on a black list, making it more difficult for them to have access to international financial markets.