In what will be remembered as a major victory for the crypto community, FinCEN, the agency attached to the Treasury Department, announced the extension of the review deadline for its proposed regulation on cryptocurrency transactions.
“There is strength in unity”, the proverb that the crypto community applied very efficiently to deal with the hasty regulations that the Treasury Department, through its office for the control of financial crimes, FinCEN, seeks to impose on the cryptocurrencies, . The wave of comments, complaints and suggestions that the entity received from the crypto community, lead the regulator to to pronounce a new comment period, extending the time initially established for the evaluation of its rule by 15 more days for transactions exceeding the threshold of $10.000 USD, and an additional 45 days to evaluate the requirements on transactions exceeding the threshold of $3.000 USD, as established by the Travel Rule.
In its statement, issued on January 14, the entity indicated that “will reopen the comment period for its recent regulatory proposal”, which involves certain types of transactions carried out with cryptocurrencies and digital assets.
The agency also noted that its notice provides additional information regarding the reporting form that stakeholders must complete, and thanked the community for its participation and for the robust responses that many of the companies in this industry issued to the agency. The extension periods announced by FinCEN will allow stakeholders, and the crypto community in general, to evaluate the regulatory proposals in more detail, and to formulate more appropriate comments on the requirements proposed by the US regulator for the crypto industry.
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Too short a comment period
With Christmas Eve just one day away, the Treasury Department has formally announced the arrival of a new regulation for cryptocurrencies, one that exerts control over transactions made with crypto assets to or from Wallets self-custody. As we well know, funds stored in self-hosted wallets are under the management, control and responsibility of their owners, and not of exchanges or trusted third parties. Thus, since they are controlled independently by the users themselves, the regulator does not have access to the financial information processed by them. To correct this, the Department imposed a new regulation that requires exchanges, cryptocurrency exchanges and other financial services companies with digital assets to register and report to FinCEN the transactions carried out with crypto assets from this type of wallet, and that exceed the thresholds established by the regulator; as well as verify the identity of the users, through the KYC (Know Your Customer) regulation that carry out these transactions.
For this new regulation, of great importance and interest to the crypto industry, and to the leadership of the United States as a world power nation, the Department established a period of only 15 days for its evaluation, study and analysis. And as we already mentioned, it was officially published on December 23, coinciding with most of the holidays of this time of year, such as Christmas Day and New Year's Day; leaving a period of business days much shorter than that allocated by the regulator, and the minimum considered necessary for the evaluation of regulations of great importance such as this one.
The crypto community reacts
Of course, the department's haste caused great surprise throughout the crypto community, leading to major industry players such as BitGo, Coinbase, And till Chainalysis, to react and speak out against the hasty regulation. Several US legislators and congressmen even described the new regulation as counterproductive for the country's technological leadership and development, pointing out that its possible implications required more than 15 days for a complete and in-depth evaluation and understanding.
Now, with more than 7.500 comments, FinCEN has announced the extension of the evaluation period of the rule for 15 and 45 more days, for the different thresholds established for transactions, counted from January 14, according to the statement. By the time the new extension ends, the administration of the Treasury Department is likely to have changed hands. The person nominated for the position currently held by Steven Mnuchin is Janet Yellen, who in the past has strongly criticized BitcoinHopefully your appreciation for cryptocurrency has changed a bit over the years and with the current maturity of the market.
Continue reading: Treasury deadline expires today, rejection of cryptocurrency regulations continues
