EU Pushes For Bitcoin Database And Transparency

Anonymous is the name of bitcoin’s game. But Europe might like to make it less so. The European Commission would like to create a central database of digital currency users to prevent terrorist financing and money laundering – for the obvious reasons.
The regulators there would like to establish a central database by June 2019 whereby, ‘obliged entities need to collect, process and record personal data, and sometimes to share such data with public authorities (such as FIUs) or with private entities within the same group.’
The challenges for this ambitious plan include personal data violations and insufficient cybersecurity, the darknet being a screaming example. More importantly, cash is actually the preferred currency of illegal transactions and terrorist financing; so while the effect of this proposal may not do much for terrorism or money laundering, it is likely to increase the friction associated with bitcoin transactions.

This post was published at Pymnts on July 29, 2016.

Comments are closed.