EDCAB founder Siân Jones addressed the European parliament’s public hearing on virtual currencies earlier this year.
The EU is adopting AML provisions for virtual currencies The much-awaited European Commission’s anti-money laundering legislation covering virtual currency may need to tighten its definition of "wallet providers" – as it stands the wording could mean multisig key holders could be caught by the provisions.
According to the proposals, only those wallet providers offering custodial services " of credentials necessary to access virtual currencies " are to be included in the legislation. However, there is no primary purpose limitation, meaning anyone who has responsibility for taking care of virtual currency keys for someone else will likely need to carry out due diligence, monitor transactions and report suspicious activity.
Siân Jones, founder, EDCAB, who spoke at the European parliament’s public hearing on virtual currencies earlier in the year, said one point is to be addressed if the scope of the definition of wallet providers.
Jones told IBTimes : "There are some issues around definitions and scope, about which we are making representations, and have already started that today actually.
"There are issues about what might end up being included as a custodial wallet provider. There is a definition and we believe that potentially it’s much wider than the term ‘wallet provider’; it could even include multisig key holders and so on, which could be problematic. So we need to tighten up perhaps on some of those things."
Earlier this week (5 July), the European Commission adopted proposals for legislation to amend the 4th Anti-Money Laundering Directive (4AMLD) that will bring virtual currency exchanges and wallet providers into the EU’s anti-money laundering framework.
The proposals will see exchanges and custodial wallet providers added to the list of "obliged entities" required to carry out customer due diligence (also known as KYC), monitor […]
