US Treasury drops plan to lower crypto reporting threshold to $250.
A controversial 2020 US crypto surveillance proposal has been officially removed.
FinCEN and the Federal Reserve abandoned a proposed change that would have lowered the threshold for certain cross-border recordkeeping requirements from:
3,000 dollars.
only to:
$250.
The proposal would have significantly expanded the number of smaller transactions requiring financial institutions to collect and retain identifying information.
Crypto privacy advocates have argued that such a low threshold would have subjected large numbers of ordinary transactions to additional financial surveillance.
FinCEN says the proposal is being withdrawn because more than five years have passed, the digital asset industry has changed significantly and any future rule needs to include new public information.
An important distinction: the existing travel rule has not disappeared.
What lingers is the proposed extension to 2020 that would have lowered the threshold to $250.
This follows other recent Treasury moves that include proposed rules for self-hosted wallets and crypto mixing.
Together, some long-standing proposals to expand crypto transaction reporting have now been abandoned.
For Bitcoin users, direction is important.
Washington can still write new laws in the future.
But the old $250 offer is officially off the table.