All of Japan’s crypto exchanges will adopt the Financial Action Task Force (FATF)’s Travel Rule on April 1 – a move that means most of East Asia’s biggest trading platforms will have begun complying with the controversial protocol before the law even obliges them to do so.
The Travel Rule essentially requires platforms to stamp out anonymity in crypto transactions in a bid to fight money laundering. At its heart, the rule seeks to create a web of data sharing whereby both the senders and recipients of all cryptoasset transfers have to exchange identifying information, flag suspicious-looking transactions, and inform regulators when they spot a transfer that looks out of place.
The FATF has urged the international community to hurry up and enshrine the Travel Rule into national law. But East Asian trading platforms – which are among the most tightly regulated exchanges in the world –…