International peer-to-peer (P2P) crypto exchange LocalBitcoins will soon become supervised by the Financial Supervisory Authority of Finland, as the firm announced on its blog on March 25.
Helsinki-based LocalBitcoins wrote that the Finnish Parliament approved new legislation that will provide a legal status for cryptocurrency assets on March 13, 2019.
The authority has passed a proposal for a new Act on Virtual Currency Service Providers that is expected to come into force in November 2019.
The parliament also voted for an amendment to the Act on Detecting and Preventing Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing that will bring all crypto-related services such as wallet providers and exchanges under Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws.
According to LocalBitcoins, the adoption of the acts will contribute to public recognition of crypto by presenting major cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC) as a viable and legit financial network.
Along with the regulatory announcement, LocalBitcoins also stated that it is developing tools to increase compliance with regulators.
On March 18, LocalBitcoins launched a new account registration process, and is now working on a more efficient and safe identity verification process. The company noted that corporate accounts will undergo a separate verification process.
Previously, Cointelegraph reported that a crypto exchange and wallet service in Finland was experiencing issues with local banks that refused to work with crypto-related businesses. Specifically, Prasos platform became a subject of concerns among the banks, with at least four banks refusing to deal with the entity.
Earlier this year, Cointelegraph also reported on a hack attack that led to a phishing LocalBitcoins clone website link being posted on the official LocalBitcoins forum. As a result, the alleged attackers reportedly managed to steal around $28,000 worth of Bitcoin at the time of the report.
