Austria’s Finance Minister Hartwig Loeger offers drawing up regulations on cryptocurrencies for the nation and for the European Union, Bloomberg reported.
The goal is to prevent Bitcoin (Bitcoin) and similar virtual currencies from facilitating money laundering - a crime that’s no stranger to the precious metals business - and to bring trading platforms under the kind of oversight that already exists for financial instruments.
“Cryptocurrencies are significantly gaining importance in the fight against money laundering and terrorism financing,” Loeger said in the statement.
“That’s an important aspect for the changes we support. We need more trust and more security,” he said.
Loeger considers that participants in the Bitcoin market should be required to identify their counterparties and to report trades exceeding 10,000 euros to the financial intelligence unit, similar to companies that handle large amounts of cash, gold or jewelry.
Furthermore, he said trading platforms should be supervised by the financial watchdog FMA.
On ICOs, the Finance Minister Initial said they should be based on “digital prospectuses” that need approval by the FMA.