Regulatory Watch News

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  FinCEN Proposes Rule to Fundamentally Reform Financial Institution Programs Designed to Fight Illicit Finance

  FinCEN

  April 7, 2026

  WASHINGTON—Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a proposed rule intended to fundamentally reform financial institutions’ anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) programs under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). The proposed rule supports Treasury’s efforts to modernize the U.S. AML/CFT regulatory and supervisory framework, and to ultimately reduce compliance burden. The proposed rule would promote risk-based, reasonably designed programs and greater consistency in how banks are evaluated for effectiveness.

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  Who owns crypto in the euro area? Drivers of crypto adoption, payment use, and its interaction with fiat cash

  ECB

  April 7, 2026

  Using a survey of 39,507 adults in 17 euro-area countries, I find that crypto-asset owners and the niche subgroup of payers have distinct profiles. Owners – typically younger, male,and financially active – exhibit mixed preferences, valuing both cash-like privacy and cardlike speed. Crypto payers display a cash-centric profile, seeking to replicate physical cash’s privacy and ease of use in digital form. While standard specifications show that holding cash reserves is positively associated with owning crypto – challenging the view that early adopters reject cash –, a multiple-instrument IV strategy exploiting pandemic-related payment shocks reveals a causal sign reversal: for compliers, building precautionary cash buffers reduces the probability of crypto ownership under uncertainty

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  BaFin warns consumers about a further Investing In website: investing-in.pro

  BaFin

  April 7, 2026

  The Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) again warns consumers about “Investing In” and the services it is offering. The unknown operators are now using the additional website investing-in(.)pro. BaFin suspects the operators of this website of offering consumers financial and investment services without the required authorisation.