On the 8th of April 2020 we sent the following comment to FINMA regarding the new money laundering ordinance:

On February 7th 2020, FINMA has published an ordinance project as well as several partial ordinance revision projects including the Geldwäschereiverordnung-FINMA (GWV-FINMA). We greatly appreciate this opportunity to take part in the public consultation and want to point out a specific detail that affects crypto currencies.

The proposed article 51a GvW-FINMA would create a legal difference between virtual currencies and traditional currencies, imposing different limits to the exception of identifying the parties in an exchange transaction. This goes against the principle of technological neutrality FINMA usually adheres to. Furthermore, it is unclear whether “virtual currency” refers to the technical form (so it would for example also apply to a blockchain-based dollar, but not to the transfer of a contractual claim denominated in Bitcoin) or to the denomination (so it would apply to the claim in Bitcoin, but not to the blockchain-based dollar).

We recommend FINMA to remove article 51a or to change article 51 to set the new threshold of CHF 1’000 to all currencies in order to preserve technical neutrality and to avoid unnecessary uncertainty.