US Senators Introduce Digital Assets Anti-Money Laundering Bill

U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) are introducing a bill to crack down on money laundering and financing of terrorists and rogue nations via cryptocurrency. CoinDesk reports: If it becomes law, the Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act (PDF) will bring know-your-customer (KYC) rules to crypto participants such as wallet providers and miners and prohibit financial institutions from transacting with digital asset mixers, which are tools designed to obscure the origin of funds. The act would also allow the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) to implement a proposed rule requiring institutions to report certain transactions involving unhosted wallets -- wallets where the user has complete control over the contents rather than relying on an exchange or other third party.

I think I read this somewhere...

[muffen]

Been missing the double posts! [slashdot.org]

Re:

[radaos]

A dupe of an article that is still on the front page, no less. Well done Slashdot editors.

Re:

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

Do you suffer from short term memory loss [youtube.com]?

Re:I think I read this somewhere...

[EvilSS]

If /. put their stories on the blockchain this wouldn't happen

Slashdot editors

[DrMrLordX]

Slashdot editors introduce a DUPE of a FRONT PAGE ARTICLE.

Legit question

[LeeLynx]

Is there some sort of feud between BeauHD and msmash causing them to refuse to communicate to each other what they are posting? Do neither of them know how to use Ctrl+F?

Re:

[NoWayNoShapeNoForm]

Perhaps BeauHD and msmash should go get a room somewhere and work out their lover's quarrel.

Re:

[Darinbob]

Not a good idea because the prophets foretold of their offspring who would grow up to become the world eater. Not sure exactly what that means but best to be safe and separate those two.

privacy

[RegistrationIsDumb83]

Again government trying to take our privacy. I already am constantly dealing with regular companies needing way too much info on me. I bet big banking was behind this law... can't have easier to use competitors, can we?

Re:privacy

[thegarbz]

I bet big banking was behind this law... can't have easier to use competitors, can we?

Yep it was big banking. Nothing to do with crypto being effectively used exclusively for money laundering and illegal transactions. Nothing to do with fly-by-night firms rug pulling $milllions from investors. Nothing at all to do with the almost daily news of crypto scams. Nothing at all.

It's all big banking behind this conspiwacy to help big gubmint keeping the poor common man down!

Re: privacy

[harvey the nerd]

Just remember an individual's digital currency can be turned off on government whims (a la Trudeau), privacy routinely invaded even worse as AI evolves, and totally fail in power outages (from hurricanes to EMP).

Re:

[whitroth]

Oh, yep, it's all "big banking". Nothing to do with CTX FRAUD. Nothing to do with money laundering and tax avoidance,

By the way, how much did you personally collect in bitcoin from ransomware... or are you just the "professional hacker (sic) who gained control over 'my devices' (sic)" and wants me to pay?

Dark money ?

[dargaud]

How about not financing (=bribing) politicians with dark money ?
Citizen United is a bona fide disaster.

Re:

[chas.williams]

Still the preferred method of disposing of your crypto.

It's like deja vu

[not.a.socialist]

All over again

Oh, bless their hearts...

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Legislating away as if VPNs and other countries didn't exist. So cute! So pandering! So hilariously ineffective!

Re:

[thegarbz]

Not really. The overwhelming damage which has been done in the crypto world has been from exchanges and scams based in the country most affected or even multi-national homed at least in part with the USA.

In other news there's 10s of thousands of other banks out there internationally. How many of them do you keep your USD in? Reality is people overwhelmingly invest finances in companies (and scammers) who are based in their country, and the USA doesn't give a flying fuck about other country's citizens.

Somebody might travel to Mexico and be murdered

[rsilvergun]

so we should legalize murder?

We catch money launders using KYC all the time. Stopping a large amount of money laundering is better than stopping *no* money laundering.

Re:

[firewrought]

It's a law requiring CoinDesk, etc.. to tell the government when you transfer a large chunk of funds to an "unhosted" wallet... How exactly is a VPN going to prevent this reporting?

Though the bill doesn't actually say much about unhosted wallets. It's mainly directing other branches of governments to evaluate how effective anti-money laundering programs are at the institutions they regulate. It also appears to essentially prohibit financial institutions from doing business with mixers, privacy coins (like M

Re:

[gestalt_n_pepper]

> It's a law requiring CoinDesk, etc

And this law has exactly no effect on exchanges in say, Finland or Singapore. A person using their VPN and performing all exchanges outside of the jurisdiction of the USA is very difficult to detect.

Could an organization like the NSA eventually find you? Sure.

Will they bother with the little guy stashing a million here or there? No. It's not in their wheelhouse.

Will this affect secure cryptocurrencies like Monero even a little bit? No.

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[nasch]

It won't completely solve the problem everywhere in the world, so really why bother?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[roman_mir]

Yeah, only governments are allowed to counterfeit and launder money and they don't like competition!

Re:

[DontBeAMoran]

And yet again, no mention if this only targets hot water money laundering or also cold water money laundering. Some of us are trying to save some money on our electric bill, you know!

We know you

[groobly]

Govt will track every penny you spend. Govt has a list; it will be checking it twice to see whether you were naughty or nice.

Some people don't want it fixed

[sentiblue]

As long as cryptocurrency is still around, money laundering is impossible to fight. Lots of people in power leverage it too. Furthermore, as long as rich people are allowed to make donations to politics, the elected people will never ever make legislations that strictly limit their reach.

Code is speech.

[FuzzMaster]

Elizabeth Warren, you have no power here.