The development of the cryptocurrency industry continues to rise, but there are a number of unscrupulous individuals who will take advantage of certain characteristics of the underlying blockchain to launder money. As cryptocurrencies begin to come under the scrutiny of regulators, what can organizations in the cryptocurrency community do to detect and prevent money laundering?

Anti-Money Laundering AML

The AML consists of regulations and laws that discourage illicit financial flows and money laundering, and is closely related to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which was established in 1989 to encourage international cooperation. The FATF has included crypto in its guidelines, which means that both European and non-European members require crypto businesses to comply with AML standards or risk fines, sanctions or imprisonment.

AML software typically flags behavior that may be considered suspicious, and these flags and measures include large fund transfers, repeated inflows of funds into accounts, and cross-checks with users on the watch list.

Know Your Customer KYC

KYC stands for Know Your Customer. It is a vetting process by which the financial industry and banking institutions verify information such as the identity and address of customers, and KYC ensures that, as far as possible, the services of the organization are not abused or misappropriated. As part of the AML legislation, KYC checks are carried out within the framework of anti-money laundering regulations to prevent fraudulent transactions.

When we open an account at a bank, a U.S. stock brokerage, or a cryptocurrency exchange, we are often required to provide an ID card, a second piece of identification (a driver's license or passport), and even a photo of the user holding the ID card with the ID card in hand, in order to ensure that it is the customer who is opening the account and to reduce the likelihood of financial crime.

Does KYC affect cryptocurrency investments?

In the cryptocurrency circle, we all know that one of the features of blockchain is decentralization and anonymity: we send cryptocurrency from wallet A to wallet B. The blockchain will only record information such as the address of the wallet and the amount of money, and will not record our private information. Although such a mechanism will not leak our privacy, it may in turn be used by criminals to conduct anonymous transactions, thus covering up their criminal means, which is why cryptocurrencies have been criticized.

However, well-known cryptocurrency exchanges (e.g. Bitget, OKX, Binance, Bybit, FTX) require users to upload their credentials when doing KYC, so isn't that a loss of anonymity? As cryptocurrencies become more and more popular, many exchanges need to comply with government regulations in order to scale up, hence the AML / KYC policies.Of course.It also sacrifices anonymity as a price. But for the user, an exchange with real names is more trustworthy and gets another level of security.

Hong Kong Over-the-Counter Exchange

Many OTC exchanges require their clients to complete KYC in order to prevent unauthorized funds from flowing into and out of the company, as well as to consolidate the security of the entire client network.

Take Genesis Block, a local professional OTC trading platform in Hong Kong, as an example.Utilizing Onfido's state-of-the-art technology systemOur document verification and biometric tools are used as part of the KYC and AML measures framework to process customer data to ensure that customer identities are genuine and valid.

Chainanalysis is the industry's premier cryptocurrency data analytics tool, which continuously scans thousands of social networking platforms, forums, and dark web sites to collect massive amounts of data and build a database of analytics and tracking to help organizations scrutinize specific cryptocurrency wallets and associated addresses.

Genesis Block is working closely with Chainalysis to utilize Chainalysis data analysis tools to review the cryptocurrencies involved in the transactions to ensure that no illegal activity is involved in any of the transactions.

In summary, KYC is an important aspect for AMLs in the financial sector and in the cryptocurrency sector within it, and these regulations create a safe and crime-free environment for businesses to thrive.

It is true that you may not be able to enjoy complete anonymity when trading cryptocurrencies, but most exchanges follow KYC to protect their users, and a fair amount of regulation and the wording of the rules and regulations helps to increase public confidence in the cryptocurrency industry.