What has happened?

G20 member countries are looking at an October deadline for reviewing a global anti-money laundering (AML) standard on cryptocurrency.

What does this mean?

The G20 forum – a group of finance ministers and central bank governors from the EU and 19 of the world’s largest economies – has reiterated its intent to bring the cryptocurrency sector under the purview of international AML standards at a meeting in Buenos Aires over the weekend.

In a statement, the G20 reiterated that it remained "vigilant" in respect of cryptocurrencies.

The member countries further called on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) – an international body of 37 nations tasked to fight money laundering and terrorism financing – to clarify in October this year how its existing AML standards can apply to cryptocurrency.

"While crypto-assets do not at this point pose a global financial stability risk, we remain vigilant. We welcome updates provided by the FSB and the SSBs and look forward to their further work to monitor the potential risks of crypto-assets, and to assess multilateral responses as needed. We reiterate our March commitments related to the implementation of the FATF standards and we ask the FATF to clarify in October 2018 how its standards apply to crypto-assets," the G20 said in its statement.

The FATF is already working on binding rules for cryptocurrency exchanges globally.

Discussions toward the initiative began in June toward a unified approach in establishing licenses and KYC norms for cryptocurrency exchanges.

Last week, the Financial Stability Board, which co-ordinates financial regulation among the G20 economies, presented a framework for monitoring the financial stability implications of crypto-assets markets, ahead of last weekend's meeting.

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