The Financial Supervisory Authority in Finland (FIN-FSA) will now take on a formal role as a registration and supervision authority for the cryptocurrency industry, in a week that sees new legislation enter into force. participants as new legislation comes into force this week.
The new Act on Virtual Currency Service Providers will be effective from 1 May, and the financial watchdog will now be required by statutes to register all crypo exchanges, wallet providers and crypto issuers with a registered operation in Finland.
FIN-FSA has said that this new legislation was drafted based on the European Union (EU) Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD5), which recognizes cryptocurrency and crypto-related businesses. The AMLD5 itself came into force in July 2018, and will be fully enforced by the end of 2019, establishing a revised legal framework for EU financial watchdogs to regulate cryptocurrencies and mitigate the risks of money laundering and terrorism financing.
In its announcement, FIN-FSA said tha the new measures, however, does not fully resolve investor protection. It issued a public reminder:
“The risks related to virtual currency investments remain unchanged. The risks include sudden major fluctuations in value, data security threats pertaining to exchange services and custodian wallet providers, and the nature of several virtual currencies as speculative investments not involving any inherent source of return.”
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