Silicon Valley blockchain analysis firm CipherTrace has announced that, “every one of the top 10 U.S. retail banks currently has unregistered crypto MSBs including cryptocurrency exchanges that transfer money on their payment networks.”
Blockchain monitoring company Ciphertrace has revealed that mainstream banks in the United States handle nearly $ 2 billion in cryptocurrency each year without knowing it. Crypto intelligence firm revealed that a large number of financial institutions do not have the KYC / AML mechanisms needed to identify illegal cryptocurrency transfers.
Unknowingly processing crypto transactions
Ciphertrace tracks blockchain operations provides smart crypto solutions for over 87% of crypto assets on the market, detects money laundering and non-compliance in cryptocurrency networks. In a report released on December 16, 2019, the company revealed that each of the top ten U.S. financial institutions inadvertently facilitated cryptocurrency transactions.
According to Ciphertrace, US banks process nearly $ 2 billion worth of cryptocurrency transactions, which are undetected every year. It added that undetected funds came from money service businesses (MSBs) through cryptocurrency exchanges and brokerage services.
Although both the U.S. The Bank Secrecy Act and Financial Action Task Force (FATF) funds Travel Rules requires banks to identify MSBs using their network in accordance with the law, Ciphertrace claims that many people are not fully equipped to fully identify cryptocurrency exchanges and other virtual asset service providers (VASP) as MSB.
Ciphertrace notes that the revised BSA and FATF guidelines – coming soon to G20 countries – will help identify and comply with all the more important notes.
In November of this year, in the CipherTrace Cryptocurrency Travel Rule Information Sharing Architecture Conference in San Francisco, Carole House was in the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Action Task Force (FinCEN) has raised concerns about whether banks are really ready for upcoming regulatory amendments.
FATF new AML regulations
Following their latest research, The Ciphertrace report released discovered that two-thirds of mainstream cryptocurrency exchanges have “weak KYC procedures.” To confirm the hypothesis, the Ciphertrace researchers went ahead to withdraw almost 0.25 BTC every day without any questions being exchanged from a cryptocurrency exchange with “weak KYC”.
The study also revealed that a majority of exchanges are not equipped to handle basic KYC, let alone adhere to strict new rules “Travel rules ” included in the to update FATF. From there, the study also highlighted that the cryptocurrency space has witnessed a significant reduction in cryptocurrency crimes in 2019.
However, the year was somewhat casual. Casualties and hacks on cryptocurrency exchanges cost investors over $ 4 billion. So far, many exchanges have removed privacy-focused cryptocurrency assets from their platforms to pave the way for new FATF guidance.
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