Travel Rule Crypto: What It Means for Your Transactions in 2025

When you send crypto, you’re not just sending coins—you’re sending Travel Rule crypto, a global regulatory requirement that forces crypto platforms to share sender and receiver info on transactions over $1,000. Also known as FATF Recommendation 16, it’s no longer optional. As of 2025, over 80 countries enforce it, and if your exchange doesn’t comply, you can’t send or receive funds. This isn’t about surveillance—it’s about stopping money laundering, terrorist financing, and scams that hide behind anonymous wallets.

Behind the scenes, VASP requirements, rules that apply to crypto exchanges, wallet providers, and other intermediaries force platforms to collect names, addresses, and ID numbers for every user involved in a qualifying transfer. It’s why Binance, Coinbase, and even smaller platforms now ask for your full legal name before you can withdraw. Crypto compliance, the process of following these global standards isn’t just about avoiding fines—it’s becoming a trust signal. Users now check if an exchange is FATF-compliant before depositing. If it’s not, they walk away.

The cryptocurrency regulation, the evolving legal framework that governs how crypto moves across borders is patchy, but the trend is clear: countries are aligning. The EU, Australia, Japan, and the U.S. all have active enforcement. Some places like Nigeria and Cambodia have added their own twists, but even there, platforms that want to operate legally must follow the core Travel Rule. It’s not perfect—privacy advocates argue it undermines decentralization—but it’s here to stay. And for users, it means fewer rug pulls, fewer ghost exchanges, and more accountability.

You won’t see the Travel Rule in your wallet app—it works behind the scenes. But when you send ETH to a friend on a regulated exchange, and they get a message saying "Sender info required," that’s it. No workaround. No VPN. No anonymous transfer. The system is designed to make bad actors visible. And while it adds friction, it also makes the space safer for everyone who plays by the rules.

Below, you’ll find real-world breakdowns of how this rule is applied across different countries, how exchanges are adapting, and what happens when you try to bypass it. Some posts show you the exact data fields exchanged. Others expose platforms that failed to comply—and got shut down. There’s no theory here. Just facts from the front lines of crypto regulation in 2025.