Shyft Welcomes New Members onto Its Advisory Board

Shyft Network has increased the workforce in its advisory team with previous members of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

According to a news report published on the 28th of October, a public blockchain company, Shyft is updating their advisory board with Josee Nadeau, the previous head of the Canadian delegation to the FAFT and Rick McDonell, previous Executive Secretary to FATF.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is regarded as one of the most prominent financial regulatory agencies in the world. Even though this agency does not impose its rules on financial bodies, it is of relevance that its policies are adhered to by financial entities across the globe.

In June, the FATF published new rules concerning the regulation of digital currencies. These rules enforce regulations that were previously restricted to the banking industry, onto the cryptocurrency sector.

This new cryptocurrency rule is known as the “travel rule” and it mandates Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) to disclose the private information of every transaction carried out. Failure to comply with this rule could attract sanctions and restrictions on access to international markets.

Shyft is focused on implementing a sector-wide remedy to the FATF travel rule imposed on VASPs through the use of Shyft’s identity passport, bridging of databases, and data certification infrastructure.

This is where the importance of Nadeau and McDonell comes to play. Shyft is expecting the former FATF members to bring to bear their years of valuable experience on the advisory board as regards this objective.

Timeframe for Compliance
The FATF has ordered that local administrations and VASPs have just a year to create a regulatory model that follows the travel rule.

The Chief Compliance and Ethics Officer of Bittrex, John Roth in an interview said that the one-year deadline given to VASPs would not be enough considering the sector’s complexity and the cost of gathering private information of transactions. He went on to say that there isn’t any company in the sector currently complying with this new rule, however, there are ongoing talks on how to handle this matter. He also said that to solve this issue, new untried methods would have to be applied.