According to the latest reports, the Finance Committee of France’s National Assembly have suggested that they could look to ban privacy based cryptocurrencies, meaning cryptos like Monero, Dash and Bitcoin Private could soon be ruled out under French law. This isn’t the first time we have seen states try to outlaw private coins, it does seem that the global consensus for cryptocurrency is positive, until governments start to consider the real privacy focused projects, they obviously don’t want to hand over total control to the masses… In a report published by the committee, Éric Woerth, the Minister of Budget and Labour has said: “We must be aware of the problems that cryptocurrencies can pose in terms of fraud, tax evasion, money laundering or fraud, or energy consumption. It would also have been appropriate to propose a ban on the dissemination and trade in cryptocurrencies built to ensure complete anonymity by preventing any identification procedure by design…This is the case for a certain number of (Monero, PIVX, DeepOnion, Zcash…) whose purpose is to bypass any possibility of identifying the holders. To date, regulation has not gone that far.” Privacy focused coins work like traditional cryptocurrencies, though they pay special attention to ensuring that the privacy of users is always maintained. Cryptos like Bitcoin, though transactions are anonymous, can eventually be traced by looking at wallet movements and transactions on the block explorer. Privacy coins reduce the level of exposure within this to ensure total decentralisation, meaning that traders and investors using privacy tokens are virtually untraceable. Whilst this sounds great, it does propose other problems, such as increased exposure to hacks, ransomware and other criminal activities, this is why governments on an international level are concerned about cryptocurrencies. With regards to France, we don’t expect the government to issue a blanket ban on private-coins any time soon. Frankly it will be hard for the government to actually block private coins yet still allow for the trade and investment of other cryptocurrencies. The case is that if they want to stop private coins, they are going to need to block all cryptos in the first instance, surely, an economic power like France aren’t going to do that?