Investing.com – Major cryptocurrencies rose on Thursday morning in Asia despite reports that the Dutch central bank is considering regulating digital tokens.

Digital providers in the Netherlands will soon be under the regulation of the Dutch Central Bank, while Spain also plans to monitor digital currency investors more closely, reports said.

Bitcoin inched up 1.01% to $3,430.3 and Ethereum climbed 1.25% to $89 at 10:50PM ET (02:50 GMT).

XRP gained 1.12% to $0.30429, while Litecoin advanced 2.11% to $24.086.

Cryptocurrency services providers in the Netherlands will be required to apply for a license. In order to obtain the license, providers will need to “know who their customers are and report unusual transactions,” and the Dutch Central Bank said it would monitor the transactions, according to Dutch media De Telegraaf.

The policy aims to prevent the use of digital tokens in money laundering or funding terrorism. The bank did not specify any timeline for the implementation.

The bank released a report in August that stated it does not define cryptocurrencies as money, despite having no plans to ban the use of it.

Last month, Spain identified 15,000 digital currency investors to be monitored by the government to prevent fraud and money laundering, according to Spanish media El Pais.

In addition to Europe’s plans to regulate digital tokens, industry actors are pro-actively adopting measures to comply with existing regulations, according to a report from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance. Over one-third of cryptoasset service providers have in-house compliance teams and more than half perform know-your-client checks.

“The increasing number of self-regulatory initiatives, combined with the emergence of sophisticated and professional services, reflect the growing maturity of the industry,” said the report.

The regulatory environment has shown to encourage location openings rather than triggering closures of crypto service providers.

The report also showed that identity-verified users grew nearly four times last year and doubled in the first three quarters this year, reaching 35 million. Multi-coin support has also become a trend, as it grew from 47% last year to 84% of all service providers this year.

Cambridge said these changes are due to “the emergence of common standards on some cryptoasset platforms that has resulted in a rapid increase in the supply of tokens.”

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