AUSTRAC is Australia's financial intelligence agency with regulatory responsibility for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing. Its aim is to identify threats and criminal abuse of the financial system, act to protect Australia's economy, help keep Australia safe from financial and other serious crime and build and maintain trust in Australia's financial system as part of the global community.

Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre has announced the new regulatory requirements for digital currency exchange providers which come into force from April 3, 2018.

We see this as an important step toward building real confidence with the general public and investors that the cryptocurrency industry is not only safe but is supported as the way of the future. For new and existing customers, there will be no impact. CoinTree has always been proactive with its policies and practices. We are happy to say that we already meet a majority of the new requirements. For those requirements that aren’t quite completely met yet, the changes required are internal only and will not affect any customers.
 

Team of CoinTree Exchange (credit: CryptoNinjas)

According to the new requirements Australian cryptocurrecny exchanges will be demanded to register with AUSTRAC and meet such obligations as:

• Customer identification and due diligence
• Adopting and maintaining an AML/CTF program, including identifying, managing and lessening money laundering and terrorism financing risk
• Suspicious matter reporting
• Threshold transaction reporting, including cash amounts of $10,000 or more
• Record keeping

We recommend our readers to use only trustworthy exchanges and choose their investment strategies carefully.