AML

Following the recent court filings against BitMEX and its founders for rules violation, the cryptocurrency derivatives giant seems to take the necessary steps to make things right.  Announcing Monday, 100X Group, the holding group for HDR Global Trading Limited, owner and operator of the BitMEX exchange, said it had appointed Malcolm Wright as the company’s new Chief Compliance Officer (COO).  Interestingly, Malcolm Wright is an expert in compliance and anti-money laundering (AML) with over 30 years of experience.  The new COO…

The invention of blockchain technology has led to smart contracts, which are machine-encoded self-executing contracts. The terms of the contract between the participating parties are written into code. And with the rapid growth of smart contracts, various smart contract languages have been launched in the crypto space. Digital Asset Modelling Language (DAML) is a smart contract language developed by Digital Asset Holdings (DA). It was explicitly designed for distributed ledgers to enable safe, real-time, definite, and high-level specific business environments. …

The top peer-to-peer (P2P) crypto exchange LocalBitcoins has noted a 70 percent decrease in the number of transactions related to darknet since its adoption of AML (Anti-Money Laundering) and KYC (Know Your Customer) regulations in September last year. LocalBitcoins noted its ability to remarkably decrease the number of transactions related to darknet carried out using its platform between September last year and May this year. In the words of the chief marketing officer at LocalBitcoins, Jukka Blomberg to Cointelegraph, the…

Alexander Vinnik was arrested in Greece on an extradition order from the U.S. as prosecutors said he allegedly controlled a Bitcoin exchange that laundered billions of dollars for criminal networks. After his arrest in 2017, he was extradited to France where he is still in custody. He was said to have allegedly laundered 300,000 Bitcoin (about $4 billion) within six years through BTC-e, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world at the time. Further, he was accused of facilitating money…

One of the criticisms surrounding cryptocurrencies is the ability of people to use it to finance illegal and disastrous activities such as terrorism, kidnapping, and more. This has led to several researches by individuals, agencies, as well as organizations regarding the issue. The Philippines Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research (PIPVTR) published a report on May 20 which reveals recent transactions by terrorist groups related to Islamic State (IS) in Southeast Asia. The institute noted an increase in terrorism…

Digital currency companies are responding to anti-money laundering requirements of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). The latest response to the requirements involved the development of a new messaging standard. The new messaging standard is known as IVSM101. Two months to the end of 2018, the FATF was able to adopt changes to its recommendations to explicitly clarify that they apply to financial activities involving virtual assets (VA). This led to the expansion of the scope of the recommendations to apply to…

On January 10th, 2020, the European Union’s 5th Anti-Money laundering Directory (5AMLD) came into force. The new law gives sweeping powers to compliance organizations and law authorities to introduce a series of restrictive demands on crypto companies in a way never seen before. Organizations that deal with crypto-related activity have been under mounting pressure to implement compliance measures to register new clients. With the advent of the law, the compliance measures will only increase on an industry-wide scale, with regulations…

Know Your Customer (aka KYC) is the regulatory and compliance obligation for the conventional banking and financial system to capture customer information before onboarding and providing any financial services. In banks, KYC is embedded into the account opening forms, which mandate customers to provide accurate information and ideally update as soon as any change occurs in the KYC data. Similarly, other financial institutions, such as Stocks, Mutual Funds, Insurance companies, etc., also require KYC information from their prospective customers. Primarily…

Singapore passed the Payment Services Act 2019 (PSA) in January 2019, and an announcement on January 28th revealed an update to the Acts. This update is called the Digital Payment Token (DPT) and includes services that cover cryptocurrency and exchange based in Singapore. This update is under the already implemented anti-money laundering (AML) and the counter-terrorist financing (CTF) rules. In this case, crypto-related businesses have to register first and then apply for a license to operate. The Fifth European Anti-Money…