AML & Compliance

The Fifth Anti-Money-Laundering Directive (AMLD5, Directive (EU) 2018/843) was the first EU law to bring cryptocurrency platforms into the scope of anti-money-laundering rules. As one of Central Europe's leading digital-asset platforms at the time, Virtuse implemented full AMLD5 compliance in 2020 — mandatory customer verification for all users, with know-your-client (KYC) checks run on Sumsub's verification engine covering 220+ countries: document screening, biometric selfie matching, ID validation, and background checks, typically completed in minutes.

In 2022 Virtuse transitioned from operating its own exchange to a Bitcoin-only services hub. Today we no longer take custody of funds, execute transactions, or onboard trading customers ourselves — we connect you to licensed partners who do. That change also reshaped where AML obligations sit, as explained below.

No — they are parallel tracks. MiCA (Regulation (EU) 2023/1114) governs market access and conduct: licensing of crypto-asset service providers (CASPs), disclosures, and consumer protection. Anti-money-laundering remains a separate regime, and every MiCA-licensed CASP is an "obliged entity" under it. A MiCA licence adds AML duties; it never removes them.

The EU's 2024 AML package is superseding the old directive chain: the AMLR (Regulation (EU) 2024/1624) — a directly applicable single rulebook applying from July 2027; AMLD6 (Directive (EU) 2024/1640) on national supervision and mechanisms; and AMLA, the new EU Anti-Money-Laundering Authority in Frankfurt. Until the AMLR applies, national laws implementing AMLD4/5 continue to govern.

The recast Transfer of Funds Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2023/1113) has applied since December 2024 alongside MiCA. It extends the "travel rule" to crypto: originator and beneficiary information must accompany crypto-asset transfers handled by CASPs. This is why licensed platforms ask about the destination of withdrawals to self-custody wallets.

Every regulated service reachable through this hub — buying and selling Bitcoin, custody with institutions, lending — is provided by partners who hold their own licences and carry the corresponding AML obligations as obliged entities: for example Kraken (MiCA CASP via the Central Bank of Ireland), ByBit EU and 21bitcoin (MiCAR-licensed by the Austrian FMA), and institutional custodians such as Sygnum (Swiss banking licence) and BitGo. They perform customer due diligence (KYC), transaction monitoring, sanctions screening, travel-rule compliance, and suspicious-activity reporting on their own platforms, under the supervision of their home regulators.

Products that never touch your money fall outside AML obligations entirely: hardware wallets (Trezor, Ledger), tax reporting software, and our free Bitcoin Data tools. Self-custody of your own Bitcoin is not a regulated activity in the EU.

As a non-custodial referral hub, Virtuse does not exchange crypto-assets, hold client funds or keys, or transmit money — so the website you are on is not itself performing the regulated activities that trigger obliged-entity duties under the EU AML framework. Our role is curation: we list partners only if they hold the appropriate EU licences and run robust AML programmes, and we remove partners that fall short.

Compliance has been part of Virtuse's identity since our exchange years — we were early adopters of AMLD5 verification in 2020 and we carry the same posture into the hub model: we only work with regulated counterparties, we cooperate with authorities where legally required, and we do not assist any activity designed to evade AML controls. This page is informational and is not legal advice; the framework is evolving and specific obligations depend on the service and jurisdiction.

You will complete identity verification once per partner platform — typically a government ID and a selfie check, taking a few minutes — before trading or withdrawing. Larger transactions may trigger source-of-funds questions, and transfers between platforms carry travel-rule information. None of this data passes through Virtuse; see our Privacy Policy.

See the FAQ for how the hub works, each partner's own compliance pages for their licensing details, and the EUR-Lex texts of MiCA (2023/1114), the AMLR (2024/1624), AMLD6 (2024/1640), and the Transfer of Funds Regulation (2023/1113) for the underlying law.