Research on the Legal Regulation Path of Digital Currency Electronic Payment and Its Improvement from Anti-Money Laundering Perspective

Abstract

With the rapid development of Internet information payment technology, digital currencies are widely used, and digital currencies with blockchain as the underlying technology can be used as a monetary policy tool to serve national economic policies. Under the principle of adhering to steady development, operational safety and risk control, China has launched digital currency electronic payment with equivalence and legalization with traditional legal currency, featuring controlled anonymity, loose coupling of accounts and support for dual offline payments, which combines the advantages of both physical RMB and electronic payment instruments. However, precisely for this reason, China’s existing Anti-Money Laundering (AML) legal system, which mainly regulates and protects traditional currencies, can hardly adapt to the changes of money laundering crimes in the Internet environment in terms of the subject scope, object standards, subjective mentality and behavioral patterns. Taking into account the existing legal norms and the needs of AML regulation of digital currency, money laundering crimes should be incorporated into the section of “obstruction of justice”, the scope of predicate crimes of money laundering crimes should be expanded, the AML obligations of specific non-financial institutions should be improved, and international cooperation should be strengthened, so as to promote the healthy development of China’s digital economy.