A US proposal to regulate crypto coins also appears to end the anonymous use of virtual wallets. Not everyone is happy with that.
The proposal, from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), mainly identifies who invests and trades in crypto coins such as bitcoin, ethereum, ripple and other variants. The set-up is partly similar to the Know Your Customer principle that real banks have been using for several years.
Cryptocurrency exchanges, places where you can buy and sell virtual coins, have to identify their customers to some extent when they transfer more than three thousand dollars worth of crypto coins in a transaction or send for more than ten thousand dollars in a day.
Exchanges must also keep track of those transactions.
Such transactions are already entirely traceable today, even publicly, because crypto coins use blockchain. But who is behind a particular trade or a wallet (virtual wallet) is not always known.
That makes crypto coins partially traceable but still keeps some players anonymous. The current proposal should change that.