The powerful global money laundering watchdog, FATF (Financial Action Task Force), today released a Red Flag Indicators document for digital assets. “Anonymity” is #3 out of 6 areas of concern.
Excerpt:
Red Flag Indicators Related to Anonymity
- Transactions by a customer involving… anonymity-enhanced cryptocurrency (AEC) or privacy coins.
- [Exchanging BTC]… for an AEC or privacy coin.
This is the kind of narrative that stands squarely the way of z transactions gaining traction (and sometimes holding back t transactions as well, as we saw in Okex delisting ZEC entirely one year ago).
That being said, in their opening statement they emphasize that “the mere presence of these features does not automatically suggest an illicit transaction… should be considered in THE CONTEXT of other characteristics about the customer and relationship, or a logical business explanation.”
That’s an opening that we should welcome with open arms. We should fund projects that help create make this “context” solid in they eyes of law enforcers. I don’t believe any of us who are active on this forum want to encourage bad behavior either. The onus is on us to make what we have built non-scary to the rest of the world.
