There have been lately a lot of articles about the risks of money-laundering and ransomware attacks flourishing around the world, mostly thanks to crypto-currencies because of the anonymity they provide.
Fortunately enough, some people are looking at the bright side and suggesting possibilities about how the blockchain technology could be improved and how it could actually better serve anti money-laundering regulations than paper money (read
https://bravenewcoin.com/news/blockchain-could-provide-the-answer-to-the-anti-money-laundering-issues-that-crypto-currencies-face/ ).
In fact, since there is only one type of entry and exit point, the identification of the users could be required at the beginning and end of a transaction through their digital wallet (not all countries are requiring it so far). Besides, cryptocurrencies are almost impossible to forge.
Furthermore, the blockchain protocol foresees that a block is only added to the ledger only when a required number of miners has verified the transaction.
Therefore, on one hand, the protocol could be revised to limit transactions to "Know Your Customer" (KYC) verified wallets only. On the other hand, anti money-laundering risks, alerts and support mechanism could be integrated within the cryptosystem.
The blockchain technology being something relatively new and developping quickly, the current anti money-laundering is of course not suitable and regulations are not evolving at the same pace as new technologies. Nothing new about that. But as the article suggests it, there are solutions to improve the blockchain technology as money-laundering issues are concerned. The challenges will be finding a concensus among key players in the industry to find a suitable solution as well as enforcing additionnal regulations.
