Financial Watchdogs See Crypto as Illicit by Default

Recently, financial regulators around the world have been growing concerned about the role of cryptocurrency in money laundering and financing of various illicit activities. The first two months of 2020 saw many governments acting on these concerns and introducing a variety of legal measures designed to bolster their defenses against financial cybercrime allegedly facilitated by the use of digital money.

Russia has become the latest of the major jurisdictions to make a move in this direction, as the Central Bank of Russia unveiled last week a revised set of indicators by which financial institutions are advised to recognize suspicious transactions potentially related to money laundering. In what appears to be an unprecedentedly stringent approach to the exchange of digital assets, one of the new rules prescribes flagging any and all transactions involving cryptocurrency as suspicious.

Is making such blanket presumptions of guilt now guiding the new wave of restrictive measures that…