G20 To Release Anti-Money Laundering Standards For Cryptocurrencies By October

Now that cryptocurrencies are seen making their way to the mainstream global economy, big economies across the globe have now started working on formulating regulatory frameworks and anti-money laundering standards.

Last Sunday the G20, the global clubs of 20 wealthiest economies and their financial heads met to have a review of the counter-terrorist financing (CTF) standards and the anti-money laundering (AML) rules made by the global standard-setting body, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). The FATF is an intergovernmental body that looks after fighting terror financing and money laundering.

Last week itself, the G20 advisory body - The Financial Stability Board (FSB) had released a report stating that although cryptocurrencies don’t pose any major risk to the global economy, it would still have a vigilant monitoring over all the developments taking place in the crypto space.

On Sunday, in an official communique released by the G20, it reaffirmed its standing saying that the agency will ‘remain vigilant’ in monitoring digital currencies. All the member called that FATF should clarify regarding how the existing AML standards can be applied to the cryptocurrency market.

As per the communique, the member countries noted: "While crypto-assets do not at this point pose a global financial stability risk, we remain vigilant. ... We reiterate our March commitments related to the implementation of the FATF standards and we ask the FATF to clarify in October 2018 how its standards apply to crypto-assets.”

However, the financial heads referred to them as crypto-assets and not currencies mentioning that “lack the key attributes of sovereign money.” However, the openly supported the distributed ledger technology backing cryptocurrencies saying:

“Technological innovations, including those underlying crypto-assets, can deliver significant benefits to the financial system and the broader economy. Crypto-assets do, however, raise issues with respect to consumer and investor protection, market integrity, tax evasion, money laundering and terrorist financing.”

As a part of its new framework, the FSB has released a number of metrics to monitor digital currencies while taking into consideration the market cap of major digital currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum in size and growth, along with considering their volatility and speculative behavior.

South Korea, one of Asia’s big crypto market has been actively taking measures in coordination with the G20 directives. The Asian country has recently formed a new task force - Financial Innovation Bureau which will look after all the developments in the cryptocurrency and blockchain market.