The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (Finma) is now requiring cryptocurrency-related business to identify clients in bitcoin (EXANTE: Bitcoin) and other cryptocurrencies if their transactions exceed 1,000 Swiss francs (~$1,080) per month, finews.com has learned, citing a letter from Christoph Kluser, who supervises the parabanking system at Finma.
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The Bern-based agency says the measures are "urgently necessary" to fight against money laundering and terrorism financing. However, apparently the regulator is putting way more pressure on cryptocurrency transactions than on fiat ones.
For example, the media says Finma requires business to identify their clients if transactions exceed 5,000 francs (~$5,400) on currency trades and 15,000 francs (~$16,224) on other cash operations. At the same time, the local law (article 51a of Swiss money laundering law) makes it unclear if the threshold for cryptocurrency transactions applies to 1,000 francs per client per day or per month.
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