Taiwan Amends Law to Target Anonymous Cryptocurrency Transactions

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Taiwan’s highest legislature has approved amendments to existing laws, enabling the country’s regulator to combat anonymous cryptocurrency transactions.

On Friday, Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan passed a legislative proposal that mandates cryptocurrency transactions to fall under the purview of existing money laundering laws.

The amendments to the Money Laundering Control Act and the Terrorism Financing Prevention Act enables the country’s Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) – Taiwan’s financial regulator – to gather KYC information of cryptocurrency investors from trading platforms, Focus Taiwan reports.

Specifically, the regulator “now demand that operators of virtual currency platforms implement “real-name systems” that require users to register their real names, according to new provisions,” an excerpt from the report added.

Further, banks will also be required to report ‘suspicious’ transactions that are anonymous, to the regulator. The amendments, Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said, align the country’s laws with international anti-money laundering norms.

The revisions follow a pointed proposal by Taiwanese lawmaker Jason Hsu who, in October, sought to enforce a similar framework used by the EU’s Anti-Money Laundering Directive.

Hsu, a congressman from Taiwan’s Nationalist Party, has advocated against calls for a cryptocurrency ban and instead called on Taiwan to take a different position to the hostile stances taken by neighbouring China and South Korea.

“Just because China and South Korea are banning, doesn’t mean that Taiwan should follow suit – there is a huge opportunity for growth in the future,” Hsu said in a parliamentary session last year. “We should emulate Japan, where they treat cryptocurrency as a highly regulated, highly monitored industry like securities.”

As reported in October, the chairman of Taiwan’s FSC has also revealed that the regulator is preparing guidelines for regulating initial coin offerings (ICOs) in the country.

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