Great article! Im sure you have seen that the UK government has just sanctioned A7A5 along with various related entities. What’s your view of the effectiveness of these sanctions? Keep up the good work!
Any bank that wants to deal with US banks HAS to follow OFAC requirements. (Or that used to be true - if it's changed without a huge fuss, I'd be astonished).
No, that should be true. The bigger question though isn't about banks. If I exchange A7A5 for USDT and then want to cash out to USD at a bank or exchange that supports this - well, they don't even know about the A7A5. It's the exchange operations between them, and Tether itself, that are most relevant as I see it.
It was a while back but when I was working for UK banks, keeping OFAC happy was an absolute requirement. They could basically shut down your access to US Banking if you didn't comply visibly and comprehensively in blocking anyone they wanted blocking.
This included stuff like alternate spelling of sanctioned organisations and people.
This included that UK banks should be able to demonstrate that the had the plans and capacity to do OFAC checks at scale, and at speed. Designed to stop an ENRON scandal from happening again, (save money by bad capacity planning in brief).
The specifics may have changed since then, but the requirement was roughly to be able to handle a rate 3x that of the peak day, without compromising OFAC checks. (This was where I came in as a performance and capacity specialist). These requirements were public, as the whole point was to build confidence in the banking systems.
Now the whole point of the crypto is to get around this, but it should be VERY effective in terms of stopping banks of any size from touching it with a bargepole.
Great article! Im sure you have seen that the UK government has just sanctioned A7A5 along with various related entities. What’s your view of the effectiveness of these sanctions? Keep up the good work!
Good news! If they are well enforced I think they could have a huge effect. Let's see how well they do...
Any bank that wants to deal with US banks HAS to follow OFAC requirements. (Or that used to be true - if it's changed without a huge fuss, I'd be astonished).
No, that should be true. The bigger question though isn't about banks. If I exchange A7A5 for USDT and then want to cash out to USD at a bank or exchange that supports this - well, they don't even know about the A7A5. It's the exchange operations between them, and Tether itself, that are most relevant as I see it.
It was a while back but when I was working for UK banks, keeping OFAC happy was an absolute requirement. They could basically shut down your access to US Banking if you didn't comply visibly and comprehensively in blocking anyone they wanted blocking.
This included stuff like alternate spelling of sanctioned organisations and people.
This included that UK banks should be able to demonstrate that the had the plans and capacity to do OFAC checks at scale, and at speed. Designed to stop an ENRON scandal from happening again, (save money by bad capacity planning in brief).
The specifics may have changed since then, but the requirement was roughly to be able to handle a rate 3x that of the peak day, without compromising OFAC checks. (This was where I came in as a performance and capacity specialist). These requirements were public, as the whole point was to build confidence in the banking systems.
Now the whole point of the crypto is to get around this, but it should be VERY effective in terms of stopping banks of any size from touching it with a bargepole.