Verifiable Claims Exchange Networks for Virtual Asset Service Providers

Speaker: Thomas Hardjono

Currently there is strong market interest in Virtual Assets (e.g. cryptocurrencies) as new forms of fungible and non-fungible digital payments and financial instruments. In order for Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASP) to fulfill the regulatory requirements from the FATF, FinCEN and the Travel Rule, VASPs need access to truthful information regarding originators, beneficiaries and other VASPs involved in virtual asset transfers. However, in seeking information regarding subjects (individuals or organizations) VASPs are also faced with privacy regulations such as the GDPR and CCPA. Our approach to solve this dilemma is to employ a privacy-preserving claims issuance model that is subject-driven and carries indicators of the provenance of the data and the algorithms used to derive claims. This allows VASPs to obtain originator and beneficiary information without necessarily having access to the private data about these subjects or entities. It also provides VASPs with varying degrees of confidence about claims that can be input into their risk-based decision making. To truly solve the Travel Rule at a global scale, we propose the use of a consortium trust network arrangement for VASPs to exchange signed claims about subjects and their public-key information.