European Union countries plan a crackdown on virtual currencies and anonymous payments made online and via pre-paid cards in a bid to tackle terrorism financing after the Paris attacks, a draft document seen by Reuters said.
EU interior and justice ministers will gather in Brussels on Friday for a crisis meeting called after the Paris carnage of last weekend.
They will urge the European Commission, the EU executive arm, to propose measures to “strengthen controls of non-banking payment methods such as electronic/anonymous payments and virtual currencies and transfers of gold, precious metals, by pre-paid cards,” draft conclusions of the meeting said.
Bitcoin might face stricter regulation in the seven most powerful countries of the West. The reason is the suspicion that bitcoin is widely used by ISIL, says an article in Der Spiegel.
The regulation of financial technology, including cryptocurrencies, has been a subject of a private discussion of the G7 finance ministers during the G20 summit in Antalya, Turkey.
The reason for supposed crackdown on cryptocurrencies is their supposed role in funding of the Islamic State, the organization behind the recent terrorist attacks in Paris. On 17 November the European Commission issued a memo, stating that bitcoin would be subject to special scrutiny.
I was expecting that!
But they know that terrorists are funding by the banks. Now they blame cryptos?
edit: i am expecting BTC to decline in value and more NBT to be needed in sell walls!
It’s not Bitcoin that is funding terrorists, it’s the illegal smuggling of crude oil. And the commodity traders facilitating this are the usual suspects.
But what we have been wondering for months and what we hope some enterprising journalist will soon answer, is just who are the commodity trading firms that have been so generously buying millions of smuggled oil barrels procured by the Islamic State at massive discounts to market, and then reselling them to other interested parties. In other words, who are the middlemen. What we do know is who they may be: they are the same names that were quite prominent in the market in September when Glencore had its first, and certainly not last, near death experience: the Glencores, the Vitols, the Trafiguras, the Nobels, the Mercurias of the world.