MIXI

Coinbase urges the U.S. Treasury to reconsider the reporting requirement for "bulk data" in the proposed cryptocurrency mixing rules

ChainCatcher news, according to The Block, Coinbase stated in comments submitted to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) on Monday that the U.S. Treasury's proposed rulemaking on cryptocurrency mixing fails to adequately address regulatory gaps while requiring crypto platforms to provide unnecessary data and resources. Coinbase stated that regulated crypto platforms are already obligated to record and report suspicious activities and illegal crypto mixing rules, but requiring crypto platforms to report all cryptocurrency mixing activities, including those with legitimate purposes, is not an effective use of company resources. The document also questioned the lack of a monetary threshold for record-keeping and reporting. Coinbase's Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal wrote in an X post that the absence of a monetary threshold "will only lead to a large number of reports of non-suspicious transactions." Grewal stated, "Congress has indicated that this data dump is a waste of time and resources."Grewal stated in an X post, "If the Treasury wants to focus on this issue, they should help exchanges fulfill their existing obligations to report suspicious activities involving mixing. This is what the Treasury has done elsewhere, and specific guidance is more effective than mandatory bulk reporting rules." In light of these issues, Coinbase suggested that FinCEN should introduce a threshold to eliminate bulk reporting of small transactions. Coinbase also recommended that only record-keeping should be required, rather than reporting, to mitigate privacy and security risks.Coinbase's comments are a response to FinCEN's proposed rulemaking aimed at increasing the transparency of cryptocurrency mixing activities, which was introduced last October. Many illicit actors, such as North Korean hackers and Russian ransomware attackers, use crypto mixers for money laundering activities. While FinCEN stated in its proposal that such mixers may facilitate money laundering, it acknowledged that cryptocurrency mixing can be used for "legitimate and innovative purposes."

Bitcoin Core developers: No intention to filter coin mixing transactions "coinjoin", willing to utilize all team resources to formulate a solution

ChainCatcher news, Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr posted on social media, "The discussion about OP_RETURN is not new; it dates back to 2014 when Bitcoin Core 0.9.0 was released, which included the OP_RETURN policy aimed at preventing more severe forms of spam. At that time, the default maximum data carrier size limit implemented by all nodes was 40 bytes; this has always been and remains sufficiently large for binding data to transactions (32 bytes for a hash, 8 bytes for a unique identifier). The subsequent increase of the default value to 80 bytes was a completely voluntary decision and in no way contradicts the design goal of OP_RETURN to create provably prunable outputs to minimize the damage caused by data storage schemes, which have always been considered abusive. There are also other good technical reasons why I choose to retain the lower default value of Bitcoin Knot, and there is no reason to increase it."Luke Dashjr stated that he and the OCEAN team have no intention of filtering coinjoin transactions. These provide an innovative tool for enhancing Bitcoin privacy, and when constructed correctly, coinjoins can easily stay within the OP_RETURN limit (in fact, they have no reason to have any OP_RETURN data at all). He has some personal ideas on how to mitigate the recent issues, namely that some coinjoin transactions were flagged as spam by Knots v25, and he is willing to leverage all his and his team's resources to sincerely collaborate on developing solutions.
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