Crypto Regulation - CipherTrace

Regulatory and Legislative Analysis – Global BIS bulletin addresses the risks in crypto and lays out the options On Jan 12, 2023 the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) issued a bulletin “Addressing the risks in crypto: laying out the options”.  The bulletin highlights various methods of handling crypto-related risks: banning specific crypto activities (extreme option,…

On February 1, 2023, the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) updated its Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) List, adding specific Ethereum and bitcoin addresses along with several individuals and entities. OFAC, which sits within the US Department of the Treasury, administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions based on US foreign policy and…

Regulatory and Legislative Analysis – Global The Bank for International Settlement (BIS) publishes a report on project mBridge, which experiments with cross-border payments using a common platform based on distributed ledger technology (DLT) upon which multiple central banks can issue and exchange their respective central bank digital currencies (multi-CBDCs).  The report was developed by BIS,…

Regulatory and Legislative Analysis – United States Various reports issued in response to the March 2022 Executive Order of responsible development of digital assets on September 16th (various links within text) US Department of Treasury issued Action plan to address illicit financing risks of digital assets. This report discussed threats (i.e., money laundering and terrorist…

On June 30, 2022 the EU Council Presidency and the European Parliament reached a provisional[1] agreement on the scope and direction of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation. For the first time, European lawmakers aim to harmonize rules for crypto across the European Union and address the borderless risks introduced by crypto-assets while fostering innovation. Once…

On August 8, 2022, the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) updated its Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) List adding TORNADO CASH (a.k.a. TORNADO CASH CLASSIC; a.k.a. TORNADO CASH NOVA) along with 44 addresses from the Ethereum blockchain. This was an example of OFAC implementing sanctions on the person/entity level. OFAC, which sits within…

Regulatory and Legislative Analysis – Global The Financial Stability Board (FSB) issues statement on international regulation and supervision of crypto-asset activities On July 11th, the FSB issued a statement following “recent turmoil in the crypto-asset markets”. Click here for a detailed overview. The key insights are as follows: The recent turmoil in the crypto-assets markets highlights their intrinsic volatility,…

Regulatory and Legislative Analysis – Global Financial Action Task Force (FATF): Targeted Update on Implementation of FATF’s Standards on Virtual Assets (VAs) and Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) On June 30, 2022, the FATF released a targeted update for VA and VASP standards. This release focused heavily on the Travel Rule (for more background on…

The last seven months have been thrilling for us. In October 2021, Mastercard acquired CipherTrace. Together, we’ve been accelerating our efforts to ensure that the crypto economy is instilled with the same trust and peace of mind that consumers currently experience with more traditional payment methods. Now that we’re part of the Mastercard family, we…

On April 28, 2022, the Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement (‘J5’) issued a risk and red flags bulletin that highlighted significant and moderate fraud risk considerations with regards to Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). What is the J5? Since being formed in 2018, the J5 have been committed to combating transnational tax crime through increased enforcement…