Australia Brings Out Regulations for Cryptocurrency Exchanges

On 3rd April, 2018, the Australian government fabricated new set of legislative guidelines for cryptocurrency exchanges. From now on, Australian digital currency exchange businesses will be required to register and comply with anti-money laundering/counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) laws.

These regulations for cryptocurrency exchanges have designed more as a law, which will mandate that digital currency exchange businesses are in compliance with the country’s AML/CTF “http://www.austrac.gov.au/news/digital-currency-exchange-providers-register-online-austrac” target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow noopener noreferrer” style=”color: #0c71c3;”>requirements.

Hence, according to the guidelines passed, Cryptocurrency exchanges must now register and report to the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC). In this regard, AUSTRAC has issued a document that features the primary obligations of digital currency exchanges under these new guidelines.

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In addition to “adopting and maintaining an AML/CTF program to identify, mitigate and manage money laundering and terrorism financing risks,” Australian virtual currency exchanges must “identify” and “verify” the “identities of their customers,” keep “certain records for seven years,” and report “suspicious matters” and “transactions involving physical currency of $10,000 or more” to AUSTRAC.

Another notable feature was that “A ‘policy principles’ period of six months will be in place from 3 April 2018” – during which “the AUSTRAC CEO can only take enforcement action if a DCE business fails to take ‘reasonable steps’ to comply.”, according to the AUSTRAC report.

This six month period is set to observe and go through certain “Transitional registration arrangements” made available to “existing businesses to allow them to continue providing services while their registration application being considered.” Existing digital currency exchange businesses will need to register for the transitional registration arrangements by May 14th. AUSTRAC warns that the unregistered provision of digital currency exchange services will suffer “criminal offense and civil penalty consequences.”

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