Australia published new rules for cryptocurrency exchanges today.

The Bridge team is constantly studying and tailoring our product to the vast and ever-changing landscape of regulation for cryptocurrency on a global scale. On 3 April 2018 the Australia financial intelligence agency, Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) published their legislation for domestically based digital currency exchanges. These are now codified into law.

There are a few criteria that an exchange must meet in order to operate in Australia:

1) Adopt and maintain anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CTF) programs that focus on the identification, mitigation, and management of associated risks.

2) Verify user identities.

3) Report “suspicious matters” to AUSTRAC, as well as any transactions involving “physical currency of $10,000 (AUD) or more.”

4) Keep certain records for seven years.

Existing digital currency exchanges will also have to register by 14 May 2018. Enforcement will be taken in the form of a civil penalty, injunction and external compliance audit.

The Bridge blockchain will be agnostic and allows our system to build alongside the best business leaders in AML compliance. This means that whether a business operates a DEX in Singapore or a centralized exchange in Australia, our solution will integrate with the industry leader in each nation to serve that specific demographic. This will allow criteria 1 and 2 to be satisfied.

Using a digital identity managed on the Bridge blockchain, a relationship is established between the user and exchange, which ensures that AML compliance is met. The Bridge ID keeps an up-to-date status (issuance, validity, and revocation) of this compliance by the authority that maintains it. Bridge can also be tailored to unique transactional logic as the user or business desires, so criteria 3 is also satisfied. As long as the blockchain is operational, then the records will be traceable indefinitely. Once again, criteria 4 is met.

We are confident that our solution will meet the needs of many businesses with an offering that is simple and functional. The team has been working tirelessly and have added some of the best engineers from across the world to help further serve our community and in-line growing customer base. We will introduce the new members of our team with the Bridge community soon!