Nexo co-founder Antoni Trenchev advised Cointelegraph that he believes the knowledge revealed throughout the latest FinCen leak vindicates the cryp
Nexo co-founder Antoni Trenchev advised Cointelegraph that he believes the knowledge revealed throughout the latest FinCen leak vindicates the crypto business. In keeping with the leak, the world’s main monetary establishments cleared over $2 trillion “suspicious” transactions — and Deutsche Financial institution alone cleared over $1.three trillion of that quantity. Trenchev mentioned:
“The very first thing I am feeling is vindication as a result of like everybody has been saying for years, all that Bitcoin and cash laundering in the identical breath. We have been listening to that from regulators, from politicians, from bankers, from nearly anybody. And it seems that the primary selection for cash launderers nonetheless is the U.S. greenback and nonetheless is the incumbent legacy monetary system.”
Had such a stage of exercise come from Coinbase or Nexo, he agreed that legislation enforcement would have paid them a go to the very subsequent day, saying “Yeah, it is a horrible double commonplace.”
Trenchev additionally emphasised the truth that the one firm that was talked about within the Leak with any cryptocurrency ties was OneCoin, and even that was a stretch, in his opinion:
“Her [Ruja Ignatova, OneCoin founder] mission had little or no to do with crypto, they did not also have a blockchain. This can be a basic multilevel advertising and marketing Ponzi scheme.”
In the case of bankers, Trenchev believes that there’s little motivation to curtail cash laundering and different illicit actions, because the punishment appears to be slightly forgiving. In reality, such actions will be extremely profitable:
“It is referred to as ‘willful blindness’, like the place you already know there’s one thing mistaken, however you select to disregard it. <…> After which, second of all, the sanctions usually are not that dangerous. Whenever you have a look at what occurred, hardly anybody from the bankers has been prosecuted criminally for cash laundering. And the caveat right here can be that when you file a suspicious transaction report, this nearly provides you immunity from the rule of legislation,”
Nexo additionally recordsdata “varied suspicious exercise experiences” with related regulators world wide. Trenchev mentioned that roughly 4% of Nexo’s transactions get flagged. The corporate can be pressured to adjust to the U.S. sanctions and blacklist international locations like Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea,
Although it’s unclear if the publicity generated by the Leak will result in investigations and prosecutions, most of the implicated banks had been punished by the market.