Europe Is Cracking Down On Bitcoin To hinder Terrorist Financing

Following the brutal attacks in Paris remaining week, European officials are looking for new easy methods to prevent future acts of terrorism. one way to try this, they believe, is to make it harder to transfer money anonymously and to make use of digital currencies like bitcoin, which is able to permit terrorists to function beneath the radars of investigators.

On Friday, inside and justice ministers within the European Union (ecu) will dangle a “obstacle assembly” and ask the ecu fee—the european’s government body—to “support controls of non-banking payment strategies corresponding to digital/nameless payments and digital currencies and transfers of gold, treasured metals, via pre-paid cards,” according to documents obtained by way of Reuters.

the european commission introduced prior this week that it was investigating whether or not bitcoin and different digital currencies have been excited about terrorist financing, CoinDesk stories.

the most widely used virtual foreign money, bitcoin, is incessantly employed so that you could switch cash nearly anonymously; it does now not require both party to expose private information. as a result, bitcoin is ceaselessly the forex of choice for hackers stressful ransom funds, or for getting medication on illicit websites, such as the now-shuttered marketplace Silk street.

[by means of Reuters]