U.S. scraps proposed $10,000 reporting rule for for crypto sent to private wallets

The U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network announced on Sunday that it has withdrawn two proposed rulemakings that had targeted cryptocurrency transfers to self-custodied wallets and transactions involving crypto mixers. The older proposal, first issued in December 2020, would have required banks and money‑service businesses — including crypto exchanges — to file reports when customers sent more than $10,000 in crypto to or from “unhosted” wallets. An unhosted wallet refers to an address where the user retains control of the private keys rather than leaving assets with a custodial platform. Under the 2020 draft rule, firms would also have been required to collect identifying information about both the customer and the counterparty wallet when transfers exceeded $10,000, with the threshold applying to aggregated transfers over a 24‑hour period. That proposal generated thousands of public comments and lingered unresolved for nearly six years without ever taking effect. FinCEN also pulled a separate 2023 proposal that would have designated transactions involving crypto mixers as a primary money‑laundering concern. That designation would have allowed the agency to impose enhanced reporting obligations on financial institutions that handled mixer-related activity. Like the wallet rule, the mixer proposal had not been implemented. The agency framed the withdrawals as part of the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda and an effort to craft digital‑asset rules that are “fit‑for‑purpose.” FinCEN made clear that neither proposal had been in effect at the time of withdrawal, removing two regulatory options that had been under consideration for several years.