As we watch our world in turmoil under the debt of the legacy financial system, our hopes turn to the nascent cryptocurrency and Web3 system that offers the opportunity to provide scalable, coordination and incentive tools in finance and culture that every single human can use.

These new tools only work if their fundamental principles are kept intact but the EU’s new Transfer of Funds Regulation (TFR) proposals compromise these principles and will suffocate the entire European Web3 industry before its full potential for society is properly understood.

We are urging the members of the European Parliament to reconsider the recently passed Transfer of Funds Regulation (TFR) that outlines a new regulatory framework for Self-Hosted cryptocurrency and Web3 wallets.

This petition aims to express the will of European Web3 users to engage in polite and informative dialogue with policy makers on the need to remove these amendments during the trilogue discussion period.

The amendments proposed in TFR are not only unlikely to achieve the EU's desired outcome but also have the potential to create a new set of challenges that stifle European innovation, threaten personal privacy, and jeopardize the safety of those who choose to interact with cryptocurrency and Web3.

The TFR amendments in question:

• Require crypto asset service providers (CASPs) to collect personally identifiable information for both the payer and payee of every transaction involving a Self-Hosted wallet, verify that information, and report directly to the EU as well as anti-money laundering authorities if the transaction is in excess of €1000
• Call for the EU to create and maintain a directory linking Self-Hosted wallet addresses to their owners
• Ban CASPs from interacting with blockchain-based protocols such as decentralized exchanges 

These regulations fundamentally undermine the principles of cryptocurrency and Web3 which have the promise of being the most efficient and scalable coordination tools humankind has ever developed.

Critique of TFR Regulations:

1)  TFR will completely cripple the EU in the new global economy, as these sweeping regulations will limit the potential for economic prosperity as well as force many existing European crypto and Web3 companies to relocate abroad.

2) Wallet directories will create massive data honeypots, which hackers could exploit to conduct targeted attacks on European citizens.

3) TFR violates the fundamental rights to privacy outlined in many core European political documents.

4) Underprivileged populations in Europe will be excluded from decentralized financial technology and the open-access tools that come with it. 

5) These blanket regulations are largely unnecessary as data indicates the use of crypto for criminal activity is minimal and the transparent nature of the blockchain allows for the precise targeting of illicit users without harming economic innovation.

Please sign this petition if you also find hope in the new Web3 system and would like the EU to take more time to understand the space before proposing regulations on it.

 

- Follow Luminous Compounds on Twitter: @lumincompounds 

- Follow Luminous Compounds on Medium: https://medium.com/@luminouscompounds

- Read more about the implications of TFR: https://medium.com/@luminouscompounds/why-the-eus-transfer-of-funds-regulations-tfr-would-cripple-the-european-web3-industry-e3f9b307766