Requirements for Certain Transactions Involving Convertible Virtual Currency or Digital Assets; Withdrawal

Key dates

2020-12-23

FinCEN published the NPRM at 85 FR 83840 proposing additional reporting, recordkeeping, and identity-verification requirements for certain transactions involving unhosted or otherwise covered wallets.

2026-10-06

FinCEN withdrew the NPRM and stated that it would take no further action on that rulemaking.

Suggested considerations

• Compliance teams may wish to remove implementation workstreams, testing scenarios, and policy language that were created solely for the withdrawn NPRM's proposed $3,000 recordkeeping or $10,000 reporting thresholds.
• Firms should consider documenting that the NPRM was never effective and that its withdrawal does not eliminate existing obligations under the Bank Secrecy Act or applicable implementing regulations in 31 CFR parts 1010, 1020, and 1022.
• Banks and MSBs may wish to reassess whether current controls for transfers involving unhosted wallets remain risk-based and supported by documented AML risk assessments, rather than treating the withdrawn proposal's thresholds as mandatory rules.
• Crypto businesses should continue reviewing applicable customer-identification, customer-due-diligence, suspicious-activity-reporting, recordkeeping, transaction-monitoring, and OFAC sanctions requirements independently of this withdrawal.
• Regulatory-monitoring teams may wish to track whether FinCEN or Treasury develops a replacement digital-asset framework, particularly in light of the stated policy objective that digital-asset regulation be fit for purpose.

What changed

FinCEN withdrew the NPRM published at 85 FR 83840 and stated that it will take no further action on that rulemaking. The withdrawn proposal would have required banks and money services businesses to file reports when a transaction involving an unhosted or otherwise covered wallet exceeded $10,000, or multiple such transactions exceeded $10,000 in 24 hours. It also would have required records, counterparty information, and customer identity verification for covered transactions exceeding $3,000. The proposal would have covered unhosted wallets and wallets held at foreign financial institutions not subject to the Bank Secrecy Act in jurisdictions identified by FinCEN. Because the NPRM was never finalized, its $3,000 and $10,000 thresholds do not become, and never became, operative requiremen

Who is affected

• Banks subject to the Bank Secrecy Act
• Money services businesses, including cryptocurrency exchanges and other virtual-currency money transmitters
• Crypto exchanges processing transfers to or from unhosted wallets
• Crypto businesses and financial institutions maintaining AML, transaction-monitoring, and sanctions programs

Related regulations

• Bank Secrecy Act
• 31 CFR Part 1010
• 31 CFR Part 1020
• 31 CFR Part 1022
• Executive Order 14178
• Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctions regulations