The EU executive has announced an intention to establish a centralised database to collect and keep information about digital currency users.

The European Commission proposes this as a means to counter financing of terrorism and money laundering. According to the plan, the database should be put into operation in June 2019.

“For that purpose, obliged entities need to collect, process and record personal data, and sometimes to share such data with public authorities (such as FIUs) or with private entities within the same group,” the proposal says.

The term “obliged entities” refers to cryptocurrency exchanges and digital wallets that the Commission seeks to regulate like traditional financial institutions.

Meanwhile, according to Cointelegraph, European cybersecurity services will hardly be able to ensure the immunity of the sensible financial and personal information within the abovementioned database. The statistics show that the number of only registered cyberattacks on governmental agencies, law enforcement bodies and non-profit organisations has reached 229 since 2004.

As CoinFox previously reported, The European Commission proposes to apply anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism regulations to prepaid cards and cryptocurrencies, which then will be stripped of their principal advantage – users’ anonymity.

Ludmila Brus