Investing.com – Major digital coins opened the first week of March trading lower, set back by reports over the weekend that regulators have set guidelines on crypto assets to combat money laundering and crypto companies are being denied banking services.
Last week, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) finalized its revision of the Interpretive Note to Recommendation 15 that contains requirements for regulating and supervising digital asset services providers. FATF is an intergovernmental organization of 30 countries that aims to formulate strategies to tackle money laundering.
The FATF called on its members to comply with guidelines to prevent cryptocurrencies from being used to launder money and finance terrorism, including requirements that digital asset providers be licensed or registered in the jurisdictions they were created and that owners provide identity information to regulators.
The FATF is seeking comments on the recommendation by Apr. 8 and regulators will have their final meeting in June.
On Monday morning, Bitcoin was trading 0.57% lower to $3,803.7 on the Bitfinex exchange by 10:57 PM ET (03:57 AM GMT).
Ethereum was down 3.37% to $129.5, XRP slipped 1.70% to $0.30814 and Litecoin lost 1.95% to $47.602 over the past 24 hours.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported that crypto companies are still having a hard time to access to banking services.
“The standard answer of ‘just go to your local Chase branch’ doesn’t work in crypto,” Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of quantitative crypto trading company Alameda Research, told Bloomberg.
The financial newswire reported that crypto businesses from New York to Hong Kong are often denied basic banking services by the likes of HSBC Holdings Plc (LON:HSBA) and JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE:JPM)., making it harder for them to keep the business from running.