The G20 Countries have signed a joint declaration in Buenos Aires, where it promises to regulate cryptocurrencies and combat its use for money laundering and the financing of terrorism in line with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards, per a Saudi Gazette report.



Section 25 of the declaration signed by the forum reads:



“We will regulate crypto-assets for anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism in line with FATF standards, and we will consider other responses as needed.”

FAFT was created by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), as a policy-making organization to fight money laundering and the financing of terrorists. The FATF began discussing ways to introduce binding rules that would govern cryptocurrency exchanges globally, earlier this year. The organization had also sought out the current rules in a bid to accommodate new market realities.



According to the G20 declaration, “other responses” would be considered as needed, adding that the countries would also continue to monitor the global economy, which is rapidly being digitalized, adding that it “would seek a consensus-based solution to address the impacts of the digitization of the economy on the international tax system with an update in 2019 and a final report in 2020.”



The G20 forum first issued a communique in July, where it sought to apply anti-money-laundering standards for the cryptocurrency sector by October. At the time it had stated that its member states would continue to monitor the industry, while claiming that the sector does not pose a financial.



The forum had commissioned its regulator, the Financial Stability Board (FSB), headed by Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, who is a fan of strict monitoring of the crypto markets to develop a framework for monitoring the crypto sector. The watchdog had published a set of metrics that it would use to monitor and bring sanity to the markets. The FSB framework was developed in partnership with the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures.



“The objective of the framework is to identify any emerging financial stability concerns in a timely manner. To this end, it includes risk metrics that are most likely to highlight such risks, using data from public sources where available,” the FSB framework reads.



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