UK law enforcement agency against “crypto mixing services”

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The UK law enforcement agency raised concerns against the crypto mixing platform and suggested introducing a regulation system on such platforms. 

In the past few years, UK regulatory bodies took a very strict stance against the unfair, illegal & illicit use cases and loopholes of crypto & crypto-related activities. The main efforts of the UK government is to provide safety for the investors and keep bad actors away from the crypto industry. 

On 15 March, FT published an interview report on Gary Cathcart, the NCA’s head of the financial investigation. In the interview, Gary dragged the attention of people toward those crypto platforms, which are providing anonymity services to crypto users. 

Gary noted that such services may lead to some critical issues and further may increase Inflow of the bad actors to facilitate funds transactions illegally. 

Gary said: 

“They can be used to provide a ‘layering’ service, churning criminal cash obscuring its origins and audit trail, similar to how a cash business might be used by criminals to legitimize cash through the banking system.”

NCA wants the introduction of some rules on such platforms, to stop illicit activities. NCA wants rules and regulations on these crypto mixing services so that platforms always follow Anti Money Laundering rules and also should check the details of users and their fund’s transactions.

CoinJoin Bitcoin mixer changes policies 

Recently Bitcoin mixing service CoinJoin announced to block all the users’ fund transactions related to illegal activities or flagged as suspicious. 

Probably these changes to policies in the Bitcoin mixing services were part of such news, raising questions on the operations of crypto mixing services. 

In January 2021, Bitcoin transactions on CoinJoin hit 65,000 Bitcoins, which is of worth approx $2.5 billion. Such high amounts of Bitcoin transactions are raising big questions and probably new policies and frameworks will come soon.

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