Gou Wenjun, director of the Anti-Money Laundering unit at the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), suggested that China’s crackdown on crypto could expand to the metaverse and NFTs as it allegedly poses a variety of risks. While listing 4 items for the regulatory framework, Wenjun says that the Central Bank is targeting related metaverse-focused altcoin projects.
Cryptocurrencies can be preferred to circumvent bans
Speaking during the Financial Security Summit, Gou Wenjun claims that the growing NFT and metaverse ecosystem poses threats and that regulators must remain on “constant high vigilance” on the evolution of cryptocurrencies. Wenjun adds that while cryptocurrency investments promise anonymity, decentralization and a potential increase in market prices, they are reduced to “commonly used” ways associated with illegal fundraising, ponzi schemes, fraud and money. The statements also suggested that illegal activities were carried out by creating a tool from the “isolated nature” of NFT and metaverse-based products.
- While the cryptocurrency market is expanding, Coingecko reported today that the NFT market is $67.1 Billion and the metadata warehouse market value is $36 Billion.
What is metaverse? Cryptocoin. com, do not forget to take a look at the metaverse articles ( part-1, part-2) we have prepared.
Four aspects of restricting metaverse and NFT focused altcoin projects
Gou Wenjun suggested that the People’s Bank of China should work on four aspects to identify and assess the alleged risks represented by the metaverse and NFTs.
- First, the executive said that new regulatory policies for emerging cryptocurrencies should be found and their non-financial attributes (such as patents, intellectual property and other quantitative measures) should be explored.
In Wenjun’s view, NFTs and metaverse products have “a certain degree of interoperability” (data exchange without restriction with other services) and qualities that can be used for criminal activity.
- Secondly, it calls on banks and payment institutions to supplement the data of cryptocurrency transactions with “real names” to allow identification and reporting of “suspicious transactions”.
- Third, it hopes to establish a “cryptocurrency transaction traceability and scene monitoring system” and strengthen the application of new technologies. Overall, it hopes to use artificial intelligence and other innovations to search for accounts by enabling address searches and establishing a “characteristic value model of transaction scenarios” to detect transactions from huge registers.
- Last on Wenjun’s list, he said he needed to expand his joint investigations with the financial intelligence agency and integrate shared information to expand monitoring of transactions from “virtual scenes to real scenes”. It hopes to consolidate an international force working together to confront crypto-related crimes.
