The Travel Rule: Another Step Towards EU Oversight Of Crypto-Assets

Background

Back in July 2021 the European Commission (the “EU Commission”) published a proposed Regulation on transfer of funds and certain crypto-assets the (“EU Commission Proposal”).  This proposal intends to repeal and recast Regulation 2015/847¹ which currently imposes data collection and transmission requirements on payment service providers with respect to wire transfers of conventional, fiat, fund transfers (the “Wire Transfer Regulation”).²  The EU Commission Proposal aims to recast the Wire Transfer Regulation but with the key change of also including transactions involving crypto-assets for the first time.  In doing so, it will only impose obligations on crypto-asset service providers (“CASPs”) to collect and transmit payer and payee data with respect to crypto-asset transactions. Person-to-person crypto-asset transfers remain outside scope of the EU Commission Proposal. To date, crypto-asset transactions have largely remained outside EU regulatory