Trump Treasury Withdraws Crypto Wallet Privacy Proposal

The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network formally withdrew a 2020 proposal that would have required crypto exchanges and other financial institutions to collect more information about transactions involving self-hosted wallets. The proposal never took effect, and FinCEN will take no further action on it.

FinCEN announced the withdrawal on Oct. 5, 2026, and published the notice in the Federal Register the following day. The proceeding began during Donald Trump’s first presidency, continued during Joe Biden’s administration and generated thousands of public comments.

Self-hosted wallets are controlled by their owners, who hold the private keys without using an exchange or another financial institution. The proposal would not have required users to register their wallets with the government or banned self-custody. It would have required regulated businesses to collect and report more information when transactions involved wallets outside their control.

Under the proposal, banks, money-services businesses and covered crypto exchanges would have had to report transactions exceeding $10,000, including multiple transactions that exceeded that amount within 24 hours. Transactions above $3,000 would have triggered recordkeeping requirements, including the collection of a counterparty’s name and physical address.

The requirements could have applied when a customer sent cryptocurrency to another person’s private wallet. An exchange might have had to record the recipient’s identity and address even if that person had never opened an account with the exchange. Financial institutions would have had to verify their own customers, while the proposal did not require them to verify the counterparties whose information they collected.

Then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced the proposal on Dec. 18, 2020, shortly before Trump left office. FinCEN published it in the Federal Register on Dec. 23, giving the public 15 days to comment. The agency cited money laundering, terrorist financing, sanctions evasion and national security risks linked to the use of self-hosted wallets.

FinCEN received more than 7,500 comments by Jan. 14, 2021, and reopened the comment period. After Biden took office, the agency extended the process again. The proposal was never finalized.

The government’s regulatory agenda listed the proposal as withdrawn on April 12, 2024. FinCEN did not publish the formal withdrawal notice until October 2026. The notice confirmed that the proposed reporting and recordkeeping requirements would not be implemented.

The withdrawal came after changes in the Trump administration’s digital-asset policy during his second term. In January 2025, Trump created a working group to review federal crypto policy. Its report, released in July 2025, supported lawful users’ ability to transact privately on public blockchains while retaining the government’s authority to investigate financial crimes.

In March 2026, a Treasury report to Congress recognized that people could use crypto mixers for lawful privacy purposes, including protecting information about personal wealth, business payments, charitable donations and consumer spending. FinCEN also withdrew a separate 2023 proposal concerning transactions involving crypto mixing.

The withdrawal does not change existing anti-money-laundering obligations for banks and crypto businesses. Exchanges remain subject to customer identification, transaction recordkeeping, suspicious activity reporting and other requirements under the Bank Secrecy Act. It also does not determine the legality of separate cases involving privacy tools, including the prosecution of Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm.

Coin Center, a crypto policy group that opposed the wallet proposal, welcomed the withdrawal. The group said the proposal could have expanded the collection of sensitive information about people who were not customers of regulated financial institutions.