G20 Might Create a Registry of Cryptocurrency Exchanges

In an effort to prevent digital money laundering, the Group of Twenty (G20) major advanced and emerging economies are expected to agree on creating a registry of cryptocurrency exchanges, Nikkei reported, citing no one.

The report did not provide any further details about the agreement.

As reported, at the meeting that will be held at Fukuoka, Japan, on June 8-9th, the groups finance ministers and central bankers will be discussing a number of issues regarding digital assets, most prominently money laundering, as well as the ever-important customer protection. Their aim is prevention of transferring of illicit funds, especially under the guise of anonymity, which makes it impossible for the money to be traced.

As a matter of fact, this is not all the G20 has in the pipline for cryptocurrencies as they have been working on a number of plans for quite some time. Japan under its G20 presidency has been quite keen on regulating the crypto, and we know that the group will also be meeting up on June 1st in Osaka, to discuss a number of regulations. Japan also wants to convince its international counterparts to commit to cryptocurrency regulations that they’ve been discussing.

As previously reported, Tokyo has been working tirelessly on cracking down on international exchanges that actively target Japanese customers, but there is not a lot that a government agency in one country can currently do about an exchange in another. However, these sorts of international efforts that we are witnessing at the very moment, could potentially change all that.

By convincing G20 members to place exchanges under the control of national financial regulators, Japan also seems to want to ensure that countries are actively fighting money-laundering at exchanges. Shinzo Abe’s government would likely also be in favor of any effort to introduce know-your-customer (KYC) guidelines – despite the industry’s insistence that such measures would be “draconian.”