The European Parliament voted to ban all anonymous crypto transfers.
The Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), the Left in the European Parliament (GUE/NGL), the Green Party and the Renewal Party supported the draft, while the majority of MPs supported the draft, while the European People’s Party (EPP) and the Identity and Democracy Party (ID) ) opposed the draft.
The amendment applied funds transfer regulations (TFR) to the cryptocurrency industry to prevent payment systems from being used for money laundering. Since the draft does not specify any lower limit for crypto transfers, it means that all transactions will be subject to identity checks. For this reason, crypto firms will be obliged to collect and disclose identity information about parties involved in a transaction.
Crypto advocates argued that the move would undermine privacy and lead to wider surveillance, while stressing that this change would undermine credibility to self-hosted wallets such as Ledger or Trezor.
Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino called the move “a big step back for human rights”.
The draft will now enter into trial negotiations with representatives of the European Parliament (EP), the European Commission and the European Council. The process is expected to take several months.
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