European Parliament Demands Identifying Users for Digital Currency Payments

According to a foreign media report on March 25th, the European Parliament will vote on blocking anonymous crypto payments at a committee meeting next week. The committee also plans to limit all forms of tax evasion and require real-name registration.

The European Parliament tends to agree to identify checks, or KYC, for any size of digital currency payments to avoid its use in funding terrorism and child abuse. Even the right-wing lawmakers who insist on protecting anonymized transactions seem to endorse the move. The parliament will tell crypto service providers to refrain from making or aiding transfers deemed at high risk of money laundering or crime.

Assita Kanko, one of the lead lawmakers responsible for gathering the parliament’s views on the law, said she wants to extend the measures to include privately held crypto assets despite uncertainty over how transactions between unhosted wallets are enforced.

EU lawmakers’ strong stance on digital currency would make it harder to make a transfer from the EU to other countries recognized as tax havens or dirty money hotspots, such as the U.S., U.K., Virgin Islands, Turkey, Russia, Hong Kong, or places like Iran and the Cayman Islands, according to analysts.