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 in the European Union — a process whose signs are visible in other parts of the globe as well.
What happened
On Thursday, March 31, ECON and LIBE members voted on the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulatory package, which seeks to revise the current Transfer of Funds Regulation (TFR).
The revised version of the TFR brings several legal threats to “unhosted,” or self-custodied, wallets. It would require crypto service providers to “verify the accuracy of [the] information concerning the originator or beneficiary behind the unhosted wallet” for every transaction made between a service provider (typically, a crypto exchange) and an unhosted wallet.
It can be difficult, if not impossible, for crypto service providers to verify each “unhosted” counterpart. Hence, as crypto advocate Patrick Hansen from blockchain firm Unstoppable DeFi warned, to stay compliant and not compromise their legal position in the European market, some companies might want to block transactions with self-custodied wallets altogether if they face such surveillance and disclosure requirements. Smaller companies might find the potential costs of compliance too high and leave the market to established players, which would lead to further market centralization.
The legislation would also oblige crypto companies to inform “competent AML authorities” ‘of any transfer worth 1,000 euros (about $1,010) or more made to or from an “unhosted” wallet, a surveillance threshold that is even lower than…
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