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Investing.com – The European Parliament has narrowly passed legislation banning anonymous transfers of cryptocurrencies like , and others.
Operators of crypto exchanges and other services are thus forced to collect the personal data of everyone involved in a transaction. If one of the two wallets is not hosted by an official provider, the platform will have to verify the personal data before the transaction can be carried out.
In addition, crypto exchanges will have to report to the competent authority in the fight against money laundering any transaction whose value exceeds 1000 euros. This statement should be made regardless of whether or not there is a suspicion of money laundering.
In reality, this should result in dividing the crypto community into two camps. On the one hand, those who have their wallet on an official platform and can only interact with previously approved wallets. While on the other side, we find users who use decentralized applications in the P2P domain.
For the crypto industry in the EU, this is a huge setback. Users will inevitably be forced to turn to decentralized offerings, which will make tax revenue just as impossible as sensible regulation.
But it’s not the end of the world yet, because in mid-April the legislation still has to go through a committee made up of representatives of the European Parliament, the European Council and the European Commission.
Coinbase (NASDAQ:) CEO Brian Armstrong called the legislation “hostile to innovation, hostile to data protection and against the law.”
By Marco Oehrl
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