FinCEN Drops the $10,000 Self-Custody Reporting Rule After Six Years

Six years of pending rulemaking ended in two notices. FinCEN withdrew its December 2020 proposal requiring banks and money services businesses to report customer transfers to and from self-custody wallets above $10,000, and its October 2023 proposal treating convertible virtual currency mixing as a class of transactions of primary money-laundering concern. Both withdrawals went to the Federal Register for publication on 6 October. Neither rule had taken effect. The agency said it would take no further action on either one.

What the wallet rule would have required

The 2020 proposal, RIN 1506-AB47, published at 85 FR 83840, covered transfers between regulated firms and unhosted wallets, meaning wallets a person holds directly instead of through an exchange or custodian. A report would have been triggered at $10,000, counting several transactions that aggregate past that figure inside 24 hours, and firms would have collected identifying details on the customer and on the wallet at the other end. TFTC and the trade outlet regreportingdesk both add a recordkeeping duty at $3,000. CoinDesk's account does not mention it, and neither does cryptowisser's, so it is carried here on those two. The proposal sat unfinished for close to six years, drawing what CoinDesk describes only as thousands of comments. Other jurisdictions have moved the opposite way at the same figure, and Brazil this year ordered Coaf reports on self-custody transfers above $10,000.

The mixing measure and the comments against it

The second withdrawal is the more detailed document. The 2023 proposal, RIN 1506-AB64 at 88 FR 72701, invoked Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act to designate convertible virtual currency mixing, the practice of pooling coins from many users to break the trail between sender and receiver, as a class of transactions of primary money-laundering concern. Covered institutions would have had to report mixing-linked transactions touching foreign jurisdictions. By regreportingdesk's count FinCEN took in more than 2,200 comments on it, and the withdrawal notice points straight at them.

The notice said "the expansive definition of CVC mixing in the proposed rule could have a chilling effect on legitimate activity and place a large reporting burden on covered financial institutions."

The finding itself is not disavowed. "While FinCEN maintains that illicit actors continue to use mixers and other tools and methods to hinder law enforcement investigations, this withdrawal is informed by the concerns from commentors," the document said, with the agency's own spelling. It left open that it may take appropriate steps on mixing in future.

Which day the notices were signed

The accounts do not agree on the date. TFTC puts both withdrawals on 5 October with Federal Register publication set for the 6th. regreportingdesk gives 6 October as the effective date for both. CoinDesk, filed at 12:55 a.m. Eastern on 6 October, dates the action to that day and calls it a Sunday; 6 October was a Tuesday. cryptowisser also says Sunday and gives no date at all. We could not establish which signing date supersedes which. The fixed points are the publication date, 6 October, and the two Federal Register document numbers, 2026-20430 for the wallet rule and 2026-20429 for the mixing measure. The mixing withdrawal is signed by Jimmy L. Kirby, FinCEN's deputy director. That name is in the primary document, and regreportingdesk says plainly that it could not identify the signing official.

What is not withdrawn

No existing obligation changes. Exchanges and money services businesses keep every reporting duty they already had, because neither proposal ever became a rule. Both notices cite a July 2025 federal interagency report titled Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology as the reason for the review that led here. The language used is narrow and procedural: "FinCEN will take no further action on this NPRM." That is a statement about these dockets, and TFTC and regreportingdesk both carry it in those words. Elsewhere the rulemaking continues, and the CFTC has asked for comment before it writes rules on leveraged crypto. What is absent is any replacement. No successor proposal for either withdrawn rule is on file, and no account read here puts a date on one.