Travel Rule Universal Solution Technology (TRUST), originally a group of five U.S. companies building an anti-money laundering (AML) system for cryptocurrency transactions, has increased its membership to more than 30 companies and expanded its legal presence to Canada and Singapore.
TRUST, which was originally launched by crypto exchange Coinbase with the help of BitGo, Gemini, Kraken, and Fidelity, emerged from stealth mode nearly a year ago with the less catchy name of U.S. Travel Rule Working Group (USTRWG) at the time.
Since its official launch, TRUST has begun operations in Canada and Singapore and is actively working to expand to other global jurisdictions, including Germany and other European Union countries, according to a press release.
The original founding membership has now grown to more than 30, including heavyweights such as Binance US, Circle, Robinhood and Paxos. After initially supporting only bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) transactions, TRUST now allows integration of all ERC-20 tokens, a spokeswoman confirmed via email.
The crypto industry received an anti-money laundering marching order from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in mid-2019, stating that virtual asset service providers (VASPs) such as exchanges, trading desks and custodians must transmit personal data along with crypto transactions above a certain threshold. Since then, a number of proposed solutions and consortium efforts have been put forward, as well as a standard for the transfer of content data for digital asset transactions.
"I have no doubt that there will be multiple networks for journey control solutions that will emerge, and there will probably be some sort of interoperability that needs to be found between TRUST and other solutions," George Bordianu, CEO of Canada-based crypto custodian Balance, said in an interview:
"But by and large, it looks like TRUST is going to be the predominant solution, so this is where we've invested our time and effort."
TRUST guarantees that customers' personal information is not stored centrally and uses a system of digital signatures between VASPs to ensure that the correct address is used in bilateral data exchange channels.
John Mannino, chief compliance officer at sFOX - which is regulated in the U.S. and Singapore - compared the crypto industry's problem-solving to the growing issues in the financial derivatives markets when he joined TRUST.
"During the growth of the derivatives markets, we had similar situations with industry-wide problems," Mannino said in an interview. "Instead of each company going off and trying to solve this problem independently, we can solve it together, and then everyone can use it."
The current full list of TRUST members includes: Amber Group, Anchorage, Balance, Binance US, BitGo, bitFlyer, Bittrex, BlockFi, BlocPal, Cake DeFi, Circle, Coinbase, Coinhako, Coinsmart, Coinsquare, Crypto.com, Custodia, Fidelity Digital AssetsSM, Gemini, Kraken, Netcoins, Nexo, Paxos, Robinhood, sFOX, Shakepay, Standard Custody & Trust, Symbridge, Tetra Trust, TradeStation, Unbanked, VirgoCX, Voyager, Wealthsimple, Zero Hash, and Zodia Custody.