Good morning traders and investors! As the new week rolls in, it's time to shake of the weekend lull and start looking at some more important developments on the cryptocurrency front.
If you're not much into politics and financial regulations, you might have easily missed, that last week European Parliament voted for stricter cryptocurrency regulations with a landslide victory.
The regulations itself are an update to the European Union AML (Anti-Money Laundering Directive), forcing cryptocurrency exchanges to KYC down of their customers even more (KYC stands for Know Your Customer and usually includes losing anonymity and proving your identity hassles for traders and investors).
credz: pixabay
The amendment to the AML regulations is justified by the European Parliament with the Panama Papers money laundering mess, which brought to light many well-known individuals' shady embezzlements, as well as the terror attacks in Europe in the recent years, that probably were funded by money not easily traceable - whereas by trying to regulate the cryptocurrency industry more, EU would have much better means of taxing cryptocurrency, thus gaining additional funding for social services, for example.
bitcoin.com points out that some countries have, yet very relunctantly, started legalizing cryptos, just to be able to tax them. Can't tax something that's taking place underground, right?
Where does this leave the little guy, who craves and sometimes even needs the anonymity? Decentralized exchanges could offer a lifeboat, for now.
credz: pixabay
The news is not all doom and gloom luckily! Christine Lagarde, the Managing Director of the IMF (International Monetary Fund), who wrote a piece on the dark side of crypto and blockchains last month, which scared many weaker hands, has now a surprise for us.
Namely Lagarde has this time outed a positive publication on her blog, stating that all IMF wants is an even approcash to cryptocurrencies. What does this even approach entail? The IMF's pro-blockchain and pro-crypto stance has been the talk in town and surprise for most of us, as they don't have any reason so rock the monetary system of the world. Yet the IMF accepts that blockchain is a game-changer and they want it to have the same chances, same regulations as any other currency.
But how do you regulate and treat a cryptocurrency the same way as a regular one? There is no central authority to govern and rule. European and the rest of the world's monetery institutions definitely have a puzzle to solve.
Sources:
bitcoin.com
themerkle.com
blogs.imf.org
Still not selling your vote to Minnowbooster to earn SBD? Do it now
Title image from pixabay
