Shyft’s Veriscope Governance Task Force for AML Adds Bitfinex, Huobi, Tether, & Others

Shyft Network, a blockchain-oriented firm focused on KYC and AML solutions has added significant liquidity players in the crypto space, including Bitfinex, Unocoin, Tokocrypto, Haskey, and Tether to its Veriscope Governance Task Force. They join the likes of Bitfury and Binance, who had already been onboarded to the Veriscope decentralized compliance framework and smart contract ecosystem.

According to the announcement on August 8, this development will further increase Shyft Network’s favorability in providing a self-regulatory solution to the FATF Travel Rule. This regulation, which came into effect early this year, requires Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) to share the underlying KYC details of both originators and fund beneficiaries for amounts above $1,000.

Despite a preference towards privacy and anonymity, the crypto community led by market giants have reacted positively towards the FATF Travel Rule initiative. Shyft Network’s Veriscope is among the solutions that have since been floated to ease the burden of sharing information or reporting the same to oversight bodies.

Notably, the company tapped some of the FATF top leadership to lead Veriscope which launched as recent as July. They include Rick McDonell who served as the FATF’s executive secretary and former head of Canada’s FATF delegation, Josee Nadeau. The two will serve as Veriscope’s chairs in collaboration with VASPs that have been onboarded in the governance task force.

Veriscope’s Value Proposition in Travel Rule Compliance

As the FATF compliance deadline approaches in 2021, viable and cost-efficient solutions to sharing KYC information are in the pipeline. Some players like BitGo have already gone ahead to leverage API integration to assist their clients in seamless data appending, as per the Travel Rule guidelines. Now that Veriscope, a public blockchain built network, has also made a debut; the vision to FATF compliance in crypto just made a significant milestone.

Shyft Network Co-founder, Joseph Weinberg, noted that Veriscope’s governance task force will work collaboratively to develop sustainable and growth accommodating policies,

“In a time where we are seeing global coordination challenges and incoming guidance requirements that make significant alterations to our ecosystem, it is critical that the rest of the world has strong liquidity representation and directives from our largest operators who in turn aggregate network effects for the smaller VASPs in our space.”

It is also quite noteworthy that the Veriscope underlying model will allow the VASPs within its network to choose who they want to share information with, hence maintaining operational sovereignty while complying with the FATF Travel Rule.