The EU parliament has just passed a privacy-infringing law that has been criticized by almost all crypto market participants

Taking advantage of the war, MEPs quietly passed a law that they had wanted to pass for a long time (well, you can’t allow people to freely transfer money to each other without reporting to Big Brother). Lawmakers voted in favor of controversial measures to ban anonymous crypto transactions, which, according to industry representatives, will stifle innovation and violate the privacy of market players.

First, all payments, even the smallest ones, will now require disclosure of both sender and recipient data. Secondly, this applies not only to centralized platforms but also to independent wallets that are not hosted anywhere. Further measures under discussion could lead to unregulated cryptocurrency exchanges being cut off from the traditional financial system. Representatives of the EPP (European People’s Party) opposed the bill, but this did not change the outcome of the vote.

Some controversy was caused by the desire to ban transfers to those crypto service providers that operate in the EU without authorization or are not affiliated with any jurisdiction.

The vote took place despite objections from top industry players and legal experts who warned that overly strict privacy violations could lead to legal problems in EU courts.

The most interesting thing is that Coinbase and other centralized exchanges will have to notify the authorities as soon as you receive € 1,000 or more from a hardware wallet (because the name of its owner cannot be found out) such as Ledger Nano or Trezor.

A whole range of legal procedures is still needed for the new provisions to come into effect, but the trend is clear: Comrade Major will come for your crypto assets.

Bitcoin fell by 2% in a few minutes after the vote. Good evening!