Crypto Urges Sec To See The Good In Blockchain Privacy Tools

“As opposed to it being the other way around, where the assumption is that this individual is using the tool for good until there is some sort of indication that they’re using it for bad,” she said.

Kirkpatrick Bos added that “of course, wrongdoers were using, or are using those tools, but there needs to be a balance.”

Kirkpatrick Bos said a discussion on Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) measures focused on whether current rules are sufficient in the age of artificial intelligence.

“The question arose and was debated on the panel, well, what is necessary for Anti-Money Laundering?” she said. “Now we have AI. It’s made manual, AML and KYC antiquated. How do we solve for that?”

“There was a sense that the current system of AML and KYC is antiquated, it’s problematic, it’s ineffective,” she added. “But there needs to be some sort of check when it’s a centralized entity facilitating flows of money to ensure that they’re not helping wrongdoers.”

Many financial institutions request a picture of a user’s driver’s license for its KYC checks, which Kirkpatrick Bos said was “absurd, because an individual can go on the internet and develop a fake driver’s license in a matter of seconds.”

SEC chair Paul Atkins had given opening remarks at the roundtable, warning that if “pushed in the wrong direction, crypto could become the most powerful financial surveillance architecture ever invented.”

“If the instinct of the government is to treat every wallet like a broker, every piece of software as an exchange, every transaction as a reportable event, and every protocol as a convenient surveillance node, then the government will transform this ecosystem into a financial panopticon,” he added.

Related: SEC ’eased up on’ 60% of crypto enforcement cases under Trump: Report

Source: CoinTelegraph