European Union (EU) officials are greenlighting new restrictions on anonymous transactions that involve crypto assets and cash.
Reporting on the social media platform X, Patrick Breyer, a German member of the EU Parliament, says that EU officials are banning cash payments over €10,000 ($10,862), anonymous cash payments over €3,000 ($3,258), and crypto payments to hosted wallets with no threshold.
According to Breyer, the crackdown will mean citizens lose much of their financial freedom.
“Generally prohibiting anonymous payments would at best have minimal effects on crime, but it would deprive innocent citizens of their financial freedom.”
According to Irish law firm Dillon Eustace, the EU will establish the Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) to oversee the new rules, which will likely lead to increased supervision for all firms, not just those that will be placed under direct watch.
“AMLA’s presence will not only result in increased AML (anti-money laundering) and CTF (counter-terrorism financing) supervision for selected entities, but for all firms as national supervisory authorities will be under increased scrutiny by AMLA and AMLA’s implementing and/or regulatory technical standards will be binding on all obliged entities, not just those directly supervised entities.”
Regulators in other parts of the world are also looking to crack down on illicit activities centered around digital assets. In 2022, U.S. Treasury Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo said that the Treasury Department would be targeting self-custody crypto wallets.
At the time, Adeyemo said that the anonymity they provide could be exploited by bad actors.
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