I bet most of you are not European, but still, also you should be aware of it.
Very soon EU parliament is going to vote on a proposal for a regulation that, if approved, will impose some norms for services that manage our crypto assets, at least for those services that allow us to interchange our crypto with fiat and vice versa.
The community in the space is concerned about this proposal, and there are good reasons to be.
You can read the original proposal at this link.
The proposal itself is aimed to cope with money laundering and criminal activity financing, which are very reasonable concerns to be addressed someway.
Unfortunately, even if there are many arguments to demonstrate that at the moment illicit activities in the crypto space are fewer than the ones in the legacy money space, the authorities have to confront an environment that can offer many sideways for criminals to reach their goals.
Legislative power is made of men, they can accomplish their tasks by doing due diligence or taking the easy way.
This time it seems that they took the easy way.
I recommend reading the entire proposal, but what concerns me the most as a European is Article 17.
It basically says that:
- If you want to send fiat from or to a cefi with KYC, it's ok.
- If you want to send crypto from a cefi with KYC to a wallet without KYC, it's ok as long as you send less than 1000 Euro.
- If you want to send crypto from a wallet without KYC to a cefi with KYC it's not ok no matter the amount.
How does it apply to me? I cannot pay my bills with any defy/blockchain game activity.
Am i quitting? No way, just started here, i'll find a way.
I understand that difficult problems require difficult decisions. Nonetheless, I see a basic flaw in that proposal, it permits value to flow from fiat to crypto while posing hurdles on the way back. It's basically pushing value to escape from the controlled environment of norm-fulfilling service providers.
IMHO, if this proposal is going to pass it will make one step further to a prevalent anonymous crypto economy, with all its pros and cons with it. I'm not sure that this kind of economy will be better than the one we have had, but I believe we are now closer to unveiling it.