Ireland's new AML strategy targets private crypto wallets

Thursday's document builds on a 30-point action plan the government published in June alongside its National Risk Assessment. That assessment named crypto-asset misuse among Ireland's evolving financial-crime threats and promised "enhanced safeguards around crypto-assets and digital finance."

The most concrete domestic crypto measure was set out in that June plan. It tasks the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland with establishing an industry standard for accepting crypto-related activities as a source of funds, with due diligence to verify the money is legitimate. That standard is scheduled for the second quarter of 2027.

Ireland's measures arrive inside a wider EU timetable that tightens further. The bloc's Anti-Money Laundering Regulation bars crypto-asset service providers from offering or holding anonymous crypto-asset accounts – or accounts that allow transactions to be anonymized or further obscured, including through anonymity-enhancing coins. The prohibition stops short of self-hosted wallets, exempting providers of hardware, software and self-hosted wallets that hold no access to or control over them. The rules apply from July 2027, policed by the Anti-Money Laundering Authority in Frankfurt.

Outside the bloc, the UK has been reworking its own regime. HM Treasury published draft reforms in September 2025 that would lower the change-in-control notification threshold for crypto firms from 25% to 10%.

The travel rule Ireland is finishing transposing comes from the Paris-based FATF, the body whose recommendations grade national frameworks. The FATF has been pressing members harder on crypto. In a July report, it said DeFi platforms with identifiable controllers already fall within its rules and should be supervised like other financial firms. The report found nearly 93% of surveyed jurisdictions had yet to apply the standards to any qualifying arrangement.