Taiwan Legislature Places New Requirements For Cryptocurrency Exchanges

A new Taiwan law has been passed to amend existing anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing (CFT) laws to require crypto exchanges to give some information to the government and change their compliance rules. The story was originally reported by FocusTaiwan, a Taiwanese media outlet.

Under this new law, Taiwan will amend its procedures to include crypto companies in them. The law was created by the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) of Taiwan.

Now, the FSC will be able to demand that exchange operators based in the country require their customers to use real names (proved with identities with pictures) and that banks will have to block these companies if they are not compliant with the new legislation and its rules.

The Ministry of Justice of Taiwan has affirmed that this would make the country be more aligned with the international standards that are used for cryptocurrencies and that it would help good practices to flourish in the country while creating a culture and a mindset that would change local crypto businesses.

This initiative comes after the country's current minister believes that the current Money Laundering Control Act is simply not yet effective against financial crimes. The new legislature will be evaluated by the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering from November 5 to 16.

Just last month, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which is an international organization that is focused on the development of AML policies and standards to be used around the whole world, has started to change its AML and CFT standards involving crypto firms, especially in the case of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs).

We can already see the impact of the actions of the FATF around the whole world as Taiwan is starting to use this new model as well. The country has previously announced plans to release an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) regulation by June 2019, too, as it is the belief of the FSC that the more the country is regulated, the better it will be for the market.

247 +