Bitcoin app Bottle Pay halts ops over EU money laundering laws

Bottle Pay, a social media tipping site based on Bitcoin, announced the company’s shutdown on December 13 due to new EU guidelines. Launched in June 2019, the company shut down barely three months after it secured a $2 million seed funding round.

In an official tweet, Bottle Pay says,

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To maintain our integrity as service providers, and to protect the interests of our users, we have taken the painful decision to shut Bottle Pay down rather than become subject to the new #5AMLD regulations.
Please withdraw funds within the next 2 weeks.https://t.co/dZltbf7vjn

— Bottle Pay (@bottlepay) 13 December 2019

The new EU money laundering laws would require the platform to collect extra personal information of its users. Bottle Pay said this move would alter the current user experience. As Bottle Pay is a UK-based custodial bitcoin wallet provider, it will have to comply with the 5AMLD EU regulations, which will come into effect on January 10, 2020.

The platform which saw a huge growth in its users over the past five months also released an official statement on December 13 about its ceasing operating on December 31, at 13:00 GMT.

The announcement read,

“The amount and type of extra personal information we would be required to collect from our users would alter the current user experience so radically, and so negatively, that we are not willing to force this onto our community.”

5AMLD regulations

This Directive aims to eliminate financial crimes without making changes in the functioning of the financial payment system and market and all businesses spread across Europe are obligated to play by these regulations.

This pan-European anti-money laundering directive stated that member states will have until January 2020 to implement it into their national laws. The legislation marked the EU’s first attempt to expressly regulate cryptocurrency activities at EU-level.