- Proposed new regulations would force exchanges to choose between breaking GDPR or FATF regulations
- The rare meeting is meant to coincide with the G20 summit
The leading cryptocurrency exchanges are preparing themselves for a rare opportunity to meet with finance leaders and global policy makers. Crypto industry leaders and policy-makers will convene at a special event planned around the G20 Summit in Osaka, Japan later this month.
Meeting to coincide with the G20 Osaka summit
Executives from leading cryptocurrency exchanges including Circle, Coinbase, bitFlyer, Kraken and Huobi among others will attend the rare event, according to the Financial News publication. The event that has been dubbed V20 has been established hurriedly in order to coincide with the G20 Osaka summit that is scheduled for June 28 and 29.
During the gathering, the crypto executives will try to seek the alteration of a new data gathering rule they believe doesn’t augur well with their businesses. The attendees will talk over a controversial proposal by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the intergovernmental body set by the G20 to combat money laundering, and which will publish its set of proposals on June 21, 2019
Forced sharing of customer data
Industry players are up in arms because they believe that implementing the FATF proposal will radically change the way the cryptocurrency industry operates. The offending clause applies to FATF’s Recommendation 16 that requires banks to share customer information to any Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) involved in transmitting or trading cryptocurrencies, which FATF is expected to ratify at the end of June.
The recommendation requires wallet providers and cryptocurrency exchanges to share data about their customers with one another and personal data may need to be embedded onto the blockchain. Commenting on the happenings, a longtime player in crypto space and co-founder of Shyft Network Joseph Weinberg said in May:
“There will be no right to be forgotten, your data will be completely public for all to see.”
G20 plan goes against GDPR
If passed as it is, the FATF recommendation will have serious ramifications outside of data privacy as this could effectively push regulation-abiding cryptocurrency operators out of compliance. The data privacy laws such as GDPR in the European Union demand that users have control over their own data.
However, with the new FATF recommendations it will become impossible for cryptocurrency exchanges to give users control of their own data and still adhere to the new FATF recommendation. Only banks will remain compliant since they already have the infrastructure in place to continue operating with no significant disruption if the new recommendation becomes ratified. Weinberg added:
“The only actors that’ll remain compliant are the banks […] this will push bitcoin back to the dark ages.”
