Starting today, April 3rd, all Bitcoin exchanges based in Australia must take into account the new regulation in force that aims to reduce the incidents regarding money laundering and cybercriminal attacks.

In order to be visible, the Australian agency of Financial Intelligence, named Austrac has published a statement on its website suggesting that the DCE businesses must take into account the new AML/CTF obligations.

Thus, all crypto exchanges based in Australia are bound to respect the following rules:

– Platforms must register with the agency and maintain an AML/CTF program in order to predict possible money laundering situations;

– Platforms are required to follow and check the identity of the users;

– Platforms are required to report to the agency any transaction made in fiat currency in amounts of over $10.000;

– Platforms are required to keep records for seven years.

About violating these rules, Austrac stated that:

“A ‘policy principles’ period of six months will be in place from 3 April 2018. During that period, the AUSTRAC CEO can only take enforcement action if [a cryptocurrency exchange] fails to take ‘reasonable steps’ to comply”.

Australian crypto exchanges are required to register by 14th May 2018

All crypto exchanges based in Australia must register by 14th May 2018 in order to legally provide their services. In order to eliminate crypto frauds, the new rules were first created and made public by the Australian Senate, who approved the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Amendment Bill (AML/CTF) in December 2017. This document allowed Austrac to keep records of existing crypto exchanges.

However, the first bill was issued in October 2017 regarding the “double taxation” of crypto assets, virtual coins being subjected to taxation at purchases and sales. Starting 1 July 2018, Bitcoin and altcoins are expected to be treated as foreign currencies under the “Goods and Services Tax” law.