US Treasury withdraws proposed cryptocurrency surveillance rules targeting non-custodial wallets and CVC crypto mixing

BlockBeats news, October 5th, Coin Center published an article stating that the U.S. Department of the Treasury is clearing two long-pending cryptocurrency rules from the books, namely the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network's (FinCEN) proposed rules targeting so-called "unhosted wallets" and cryptocurrency mixing.

The proposed rules would have required financial institutions to collect and retain counterparty information for transactions involving unhosted wallets exceeding $3,000, and to report such transactions exceeding $10,000 to FinCEN.

Coin Center stated that both rules threatened to significantly expand financial surveillance of cryptocurrency users, and crypto supporters had repeatedly urged the Treasury Department to abandon the proposals. These proposals may have been shelved for years, but as long as they remained pending, they preserved the possibility of the Treasury Department restarting an approach premised on collecting ever-increasing information about lawful cryptocurrency transactions, regardless of whether such collection was narrowly designed to target genuine illicit finance risks. Their formal withdrawal finally closes this door, marking a major victory for financial privacy.

It is reported that Coin Center was founded in 2014 by Jerry Brito and Robin Weisman in Washington, D.C. It is one of Washington's earliest crypto policy think tanks, with a mission to defend the right of individuals to build and use open cryptocurrency networks, including the right to write and run code, form peer-to-peer networks, and do all of this privately.