Alex Borzak
FinCEN came up with new recommendations. The document contains interesting points, including the thing that Iran abuses cryptocurrencies, thereby jeopardizing the entire global financial system. In particular, the document claims that Iranian citizens make BTC transactions to the amount of around 4 million dollars, yet those transactions are are claimed to be indented for criminal purposes. At the same time, FinCEN claims that Iran uses digital currencies to circumvent Western sanctions.
The regulator recommends American businesses, including crypto platforms, to investigate into their block-chain registries to spot the activity coming form Iran. the thing is that, according to FinCEN, even though the Central Bank of Iran has been desperately trying to prevent local businesses and individuals from accessing cryptocurrencies, they still have unlimited access to American p2p online exchanges. That's why the regulator reminds American businesses about the importance of intensifying security measures for the sake of observing the sanction requirements.
In July 2018, the Iranian authorities announced their plans to launch their own national cryptocurrency. According to their plans, the coin will let them circumvent the Western sanctions initiated by the United States. But on the other hand, China has enough resources to ruin Iran's plans. According to expert estimates, China is really capable of influencing or even destorying Bitcoin. If that's the case, this will spoil the image of cryptocurrencies as promising assets to invest in.
While those threats are potential, crypto miners keep on making money. They say that over the first 6 months of 2018, international miners made almost 5 billion dollars, even despite the increasing rivalry and decreasing profitability of mining.
In the meantime, the cryptomarket has been undermined by various news and rumors. For instance, not so long ago, several big-scale financial institutions from Europe were suspected in some shady schemes regarding cryptocurrencies. In particular, the Lithuanian agency that fights financial crimes got curious about some big-scale crypto transactions taking place over the last few years. Some of the clients made big-scale transactions worth millions of dollars. Now they will have to explain the origin of the money as well as the purpose of those financial transactions. Those individuals are reported to be Lithuanian citizens. They are clients of such banks as SEB, Swedbank, Luminor, Danske Bank, Citadele, Pervesk, and Mister Tango.
Alex Borzak
