New EU Legislation to Stop Crypto Money Laundering: Overview

The European Parliament has approved a new regulation to stop crypto from being used as a vehicle to launder money.

The new legislation, which will need to be approved by the European Council, will put a cap of €1,000 on anonymous crypto transactions – those that are made between self-hosted wallets where the user cannot be identified.

The European Parliament has also stated that further due diligence checks will be required by the likes of asset managers, banks and estate agents to identify and verify their customers' identities and submit that information to a centralised database.

The lawmakers have made it clear that the new rules will not block crypto payments. But the changes are designed to put crypto transactions under more stringent scrutiny and are intended to tackle the problem of money laundering in the cryptocurrency sector.

The new regulation will also ban cash payments of more than €7,000 to businesses and the use of so-called “golden visa” and “golden passport’’ schemes, where citizenship or residency is offered in exchange for investment. It was found that many of these schemes attracted criminals who were finding it easy to launder money by investing in real estate and other sectors in European Union countries.

The European Council has already implemented its Markets in Crypto-Assets bill (MiCA), which provides a new regulatory framework for the crypto sector. This will regulate the issuance of cryptocurrencies and impose stricter measures on crypto asset service providers. The EU has made it very clear that it intends to tackle illegal activity in the crypto sector.