Eric Woerth, head of the Finance Committee of France’s National Assembly, has proposed banning anonymous cryptocurrencies in a recent report about cryptoassets and blockchain technology shared by the Assembly.
According to him, the cryptocurrencies that allow users to hide their identity, such as Monero, PIVX, DeepOnion, Zcash, should be banned because of the risks they entail, since users can use them without undergoing any verification process.
He stated in the report:
“It would also have been appropriate to propose a ban on the dissemination and trade in [cryptocurrencies built] to ensure complete anonymity by preventing any identification procedure by design. [...] This is the case for a certain number of [cryptocurrencies] (Monero, PIVX, DeepOnion, Zcash...) whose purpose is to bypass any possibility of identifying the holders. To date, regulation has not gone that far.”
He claims that the use of this type of cryptocurrencies poses major financial problems such as fraud, tax evasion, money laundering and energy consumption. Therefore, they should be banned.
The French authorities announced in December that they did not plan to loosen crypto taxation. Some members of the French parliament also proposed in December to invest €500 million in blockchain.
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