The G20 Summit held in June 2019 gave birth to a litany of questions and concerns. Chief among these is the issuance of new Financial Action Task Force (FATF) regulations, and what they mean for the future of cryptocurrency. While the regulations are not binding, each member country must determine how to become fully compliant.
The most significant recommendation mandates that virtual asset service providers (VASPs) share information about their customers for each digital transfer. This mandate includes sharing the names of senders, recipients, account numbers and transaction history. These regulations threaten the long-term viability of a number of altcoins. However, the mining and purchase of virgin bitcoin will hold strong so long as supplies last, regardless of the regulations in place.
Compliant Bitcoin Purchase
The new FATF recommendations have sparked something of a frenzy across the cryptocurrency space. Although compliance is not demanded, failure to comply could potentially lead to FATF blacklisting, imposed sanctions and heightened levels of international scrutiny that could disable that particular country’s cryptocurrency market.
The FATF’s regulatory challenges lead to two overarching questions: How will this change the future purchase of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies? And, moreover, is compliance actually possible?
While it remains to be seen how these regulations will affect the long-term value of digital currencies, a premium has already been placed on coins with provable, traceable lineage. In other words, buyers will be more inclined to buy “clean” or unused bitcoin, i.e., bitcoin that has a pure transaction history or rather, no transaction history. The reason behind this new “virgin bitcoin” premium is due to buyers being increasingly wary of owning cryptocurrency that has been used on the black market, or for illicit or nefarious purposes. The fact
