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FATF Will Finally Publish Crypto Anti-Money Laundering Guidance Next Week
President Marcus Pleyer said the watchdog now expects countries to implement its “Travel Rule” guidance as soon as possible.
By Ian Allison
Updated May 11, 2023, 5:00 p.m. Published Oct 21, 2021, 5:15 p.m.
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) will soon publish its revised guidance for cryptocurrency firms, President Marcus Pleyer said Thursday.
“This guidance that we finalized for a risk-based approach to virtual assets and investments will be published next week,” Pleyer told CoinDesk during a press conference following FATF’s latest meeting.
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Several years in the making, the global anti-money laundering (AML) watchdog issued draft guidance for virtual asset service providers (VASPs) at a plenary meeting in March, but the final revised guidance was delayed as the regulatory agency attempted to encompass fast-moving areas of innovation such as decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
As well as further clarification on the definition of VASPs, the guidance explains how FATF standards apply to stablecoins, Pleyer said. He also mentioned FATF’s expectation that countries will implement standards for the so-called “Travel Rule” for cryptocurrency transactions “as soon as possible.”
The revised guidance should also include a broadening of what is considered a VASP in DeFi as well as the FATF’s take on NFTs, according to Siân Jones, senior partner at XReg Consulting.
The guidance is “likely to be comprehensive and difficult and expensive for industry to fully comply with,” Jones said via email.
Sandali Handagama contributed reporting.
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What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
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CFTC Launches Digital Assets Pilot Allowing Bitcoin, Ether and USDC as Collateral
Acting Chair Caroline Pham has unveiled a first-of-its-kind U.S. program to permit tokenized collateral in derivatives markets, citing "clear guardrails" for firms.
What to know:
- The CFTC has launched a pilot program allowing BTC, ETH and USDC to be used as collateral in U.S. derivatives markets.
- The program is aimed at approved futures commission merchants and includes strict custody, reporting and oversight requirements.
- The agency also issued updated guidance for tokenized assets and withdrew outdated restrictions following the GENIUS Act.
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