The European Parliament adopted on Thursday the first legislation in the European Union targeting cryptocurrencies. The bill was approved with 529 votes in favor, 29 against and 14 abstentions, and will now return to the Council to be formally endorsed. The legislation aims to ensure that crypto transfers "can always be traced and suspicious transactions blocked."
Crypto transfers will now be subjected to the "travel rule," meaning that information on the source of the asset and its beneficiary will be stored on both sides of the transfer. The rule would also apply to transactions above €1,000 from self-hosted wallets "when they interact with hosted wallets managed by crypto-assets service providers" but not to person-to-person transfers conducted without a provider or among providers acting on their own behalf. In addition, the Parliament adopted common rules on the supervision, consumer protection and environmental safeguards of crypto assets, including transparency, disclosure, authorization and supervision of transactions, better information for consumers, and regulation of public offers of crypto-assets.
