Yesterday’s FinCEN rule proposal is incredibly overbroad, comprehensive, and perfectly designed to allow arbitrary information collection at any scope they choose to enforce. It truly is a mind-blowingly large grab attempt at private information of anyone they can get their hands on. They want all regulated entities — VASPs, banks, financial institutions or entities like casinos, etc. — to by default submit reports of any transactions interacting with mixing within 30 days of noticing the relevant transaction and its association to mixing activity. Currently, most exchanges and businesses keep these records anyway, but they do not by default send copies of them to regulators unless deeper inspection actually merits a reason to do so. FinCEN wants that to change.

To really get a sense for the scope of things, the first thing to look at is the definitions of mixing provided in the proposal. Obviously, the act of mixing is obscuring the source of funds, but the specific technical definitions they give for what falls under the definition of mixing are incredibly broad when looked at together. Let’s go through them: