News wallets and exchanges Chinese Bitcoin Exchanges Suspend WithdrawalsIn response to a warning sent from The People’s Bank of China, major Chinese bitcoin exchanges are suspending withdrawals.China’s central bank, The People's Bank of China (PBOC), released a statement today that detailed the official warning they issued to nine Chinese startups in a meeting yesterday.The warning was aimed at major bitcoin exchanges, urging them to make sure they’re in compliance with relevant laws and regulations.This comes after the PBOC had issued guidance in early January to BTCC, Huobi, and OKCoin (China’s biggest bitcoin exchanges), in regard to their zero-fee trading.All three have since added trading fees as of January 24th.Exchanges Warned To Comply With Regulations The latest PBOC statement warned exchanges that they must be in compliance with anti-money laundering (AML) practices or risk being shut down in accordance with the law.After this latest directive, two of China’s most popular bitcoin exchanges, Huobi and OKCoin, have suspended bitcoin and litecoin withdrawals.

BTCTrade, another exchange, released a statement that laid out their plans to address KYC (Know Your Customer)/AML concerns as well.The PBOC’s recent statement, as translated by Google translate, reads: “Following the early January on the [‘Huobi’] and [‘OKCoin’] two major [bitcoin] currency trading platform to carry out inspection, the afternoon of February 8, the People's Bank business management department inspection team also engaged in other bitcoin currency [exchanges CHBTC, BTCTrade, HaoBTC, Yunbi, BTC100, Yuanbao, Jubi, BitBays, Dahonghuo]…The main person in charge of Bitcoin trading platform to inform the current Bitcoin trading platform problems, suggesting the trading platform may exist legal risks, policy risks and technical risks, understand the operation of the nine trading platform, and put forward specific requirements Shall not violate the state's laws and regulations on anti-money laundering, foreign exchange administration, payment and settlement, etc., and shall not violate the laws of the State on taxation and administration of industry and commerce advertisements, etc. If there is a Bitcoin trading platform in violation of the above requirements, the circumstances are serious, the inspection team will be brought to the relevant departments to be closed down according to law.” Exchanges Suspend Bitcoin Withdrawals The suspension is scheduled to last for a month as the exchanges upgrade their KYC/AML compliance systems.

That means that anyone holding bitcoin or litecoin at OKCoin or Huobi is currently unable to access their funds.bitcoin zelf makenRegarding OKCoin specifically, only the OKCoin.cn portal is affected.bitcoin exchange denverBoth OKCoin and Huobi released very similar statements (in Chinese), saying that even though they believe the upgrades could take a month, it was necessary to suspend withdrawals “in order to avoid illegal transactions that may continue before the completion of the system upgrade.” While this is all being done in the name of stopping money laundering and market manipulation, it’s riding on the heels of the PBOC’s crackdown on bitcoin.bitcoin kaç paraCapital flight, the transferring of Chinese money out of their economy, is a big issue in China.bitcoin safest wallet

As the yuan depreciates, Chinese citizens are moving their money to virtual currencies to protect the value of their wealth.al jazeera bitcoinThis recent move from the PBOC would certainly help to slow that down.bitcoin roundtableBitcoin Price Crashes Since the announcement, the price of bitcoin has been crashing.After reaching a recent high-point in January when bitcoin was trading around $1,100 per bitcoin, the price is now closer to $960.This has caused a ripple effect, and the price of Ether has already fallen from trading upwards of $11.50 to around an average of $10.87 at the time of this publication.An entire month of suspended trading on those two platforms could seriously affect the markets.The question is: which way will Ether swing?As the price of bitcoin rises and falls, it often takes the virtual currency markets with it.Seeing as how Ether is the number two virtual currency by market cap, it could stand to see an influx of new users.

Time will tell if the price of Ether falls with bitcoin or is boosted to new heights.The ongoing situation speaks to the bigger problem of centralization.With China hosting some of the largest exchanges, Chinese investors buying up large amounts of bitcoins, and Chinese mining farms controlling a fair amount of the network’s hashpower, bitcoin itself is left vulnerable to the whims of Chinese regulators.ETHNews is commited to its Editorial Policy Like what you read?Follow us on Twitter @ETHNews_ to receive the latest on Bitcoin, People's Bank of China or other Ethereum wallets and exchanges news.On Thursday, May 15, 2014, about 50 financial crime professionals gathered in Amsterdam to discuss the anti-money laundering (AML) risks inherent to crypto (virtual) currencies and to listen to three different expert opinions on bitcoins.The seminar was sponsored by ING Bank and it was organized by both the ACAMS Netherlands Chapter and the ACAMS Canada Chapter.The session proved to be very popular amongst ACAMS members and other invited compliance professionals.

Speakers and Insights on Bitcoins As always, the speakers made all the difference in the event.There were two lawyers—Dutch and Canadian— who shared their views on the legal developments in each country.The speaker from a Dutch Investigative Unit of Tax Authority shared examples of practical cases when bitcoins were used in money laundering or other financial crimes.Andries Doets, lawyer at Finnius (Dutch Law firm), said that the Dutch Central Bank (DNB, the regulator) does not recognize bitcoins as being subject to the current Act on Financial Supervision, and considering law volumes of Bitcoin operations in the Netherlands, sees no point in adopting any specific regulations on virtual (crypto) currencies.Interestingly enough, the market is asking for clear rules.For example, Bitonic B.V., a recently formed Dutch stock exchange for bitcoins, applied for a DNB license, saying it wants to operate in full compliance with the rules and keeps an ongoing dialog with DNB.Furthermore, the Dutch tax authorities do have an approach to taxing bitcoins either as income or as assets.

The European Central Bank, however, is contemplating regulations for virtual (crypto) currencies, and we might see change in regulatory  soon.Christine J. Duhaime, barrister and solicitor at Duhaime Law and co-chair for the ACAMS Canada Chapter, shared her opinions and experiences from the Canadian/North American perspective.We learned that in contrast to the Netherlands, Bitcoin is regulated in Canada.After the initial success of a bitcoin cash machine located in a coffee shop, the company-owner could not place the generated money into the local banking system due to the fact that the source of funds was not clearly established.This spelled the end for the cash machine in Canada, but the company remains operational in other parts of the world.Further, Duhaime highlighted the legal risk of Bitcoin from a consumer perspective since there is no way to retrieve lost or stolen bitcoins and there are no compliant procedures.There are also many risks for bitcoins to be used for tax evasion, sanction dodging and so forth.

The main advice to financial institutions is not to take shortcuts in AML and sanction compliance programs that concern bitcoins and similar crypto (virtual) currencies.Bobby McFaul, strategic intelligence officer at the Fiscal Information and Investigative Unit for Dutch Tax Authority (FIOD), has just completed his research at Utrecht University on qualitative scenario-study into underground digital money flows.He explained some technical details of Bitcoin functions, and discussed three real-live investigative cases involving bitcoins.One case was a Bitcoin mining operation that got into the FIOD spotlight due to an excess amount of uncommon electricity used for that sort of building.Apparently, mining requires a lot of electricity capacity, and in this particular case, the electricity was stolen from neighbors.McFaul concluded that even though Bitcoin is changing the playing field, the criminal behavior related to it is the same.Further responses of law enforcement needs to be catered to the specific Bitcoin characteristics, although classic investigative measures still yield results.

He concluded his discussion by saying that he expects Bitcoin never to become a mainstream payment method but that it will continue being a tool for financial crime.To conclude, we would like to thank ING Bank who made this event possible by facilitating the location and networking drinks.We are also grateful to Christine Duhaime and the ACAMS Canadian Chapter for the idea and co-organization of this event.ACAMS Netherlands Chapter The ACAMS Netherlands Chapter was launched in June 2011 with a three-member board and now has five dedicated executive board members: Chair – Yevgeniya Balyasna-Hooghiemstra Secretary – Ben Scheffer Membership director – Antal Ruiter Programming director – Sabahat Ullah Communications director – Maxim van Veluw The chapter aims to host four to five knowledge sharing afternoon seminars per year that are relevant to financial crime professionals working in the Netherlands within banking, insurance, real-estate and corporate services sectors.