Trezor Backtracks on ‘Travel Rule’ App for Self-Hosted Crypto Wallets Amid Uproar

2 years ago

SatoshiLabs, the creator of the Trezor hardware wallet, has decided to shelve plans to follow an automated protocol for proving ownership of a self-hosted wallet erstwhile withdrawing from an speech successful Switzerland (where it’s a regulatory requirement).

Trezor announced Thursday it would integrate the Address Ownership Proof Protocol (AOPP), created by 21 Analytics, a Swiss fintech steadfast specializing successful bringing crypto firms up to velocity with anti-money laundering (AML) requirements acceptable retired by planetary fiscal transgression watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

“Adopting AOPP was a tiny measurement toward improving usability for a information of our customers with restricted entree to bitcoin,” a SatoshiLabs spokesperson said Friday via email. “It was not a measurement taken owed to immoderate outer pressure, regulatory oregon otherwise, and nary akin implementations are planned.”

The absorption from the crypto assemblage speaks to a increasing hostility erstwhile it comes to the dependable march of AML regulations into the backstage reaches of self-hosted wallets.

It’s important to enactment that Switzerland (and Singapore for that matter) person gone beyond the FATF recommendations for information sharing among virtual plus work providers (VASPs) to see the recognition of backstage wallets transacting with VASPs successful those countries.

It is besides worthy noting that AOPP does not compromise users’ privacy, arsenic the idiosyncratic information being made automatically disposable are already known to the Swiss VASPs, 21 Analytics has pointed out. The exertion is meant to simplify the integer signing of information that corresponds to a circumstantial destination address.

However, Crypto Twitter didn’t spot it that way.

“I didn’t expect this absorption from the Twitter Bitcoin Community. For the users affected by this regulation, AOPP is simply a large benefit, requiring idiosyncratic opt-in to execute immoderate actions,” said 21 Analytics CEO Lucas Betschart successful an email to CoinDesk, adding:

“Others look to spot it arsenic a threat, opening the doorway for further measures. This is not the intent. I apologize for the disorder and invited contributions to the open-source modular to assistance radical retreat their coins to their ain wallets portion not opening doors for limiting anyone’s freedom.”

Rival firms BlueWallet and Sparrow Wallet likewise backed down connected AOPP aft yesterday’s outcry.

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Ian Allison is simply a elder newsman astatine CoinDesk.


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