The Coin Center report “Tear Down this Walled Garden: American Values and Digital Identity” argues that our current AML/KYC identity system is expensive, privacy-invasive, and largely useless against real crime – and that open, decentralised digital identity built on cryptography and blockchains could do much better. Coin Center is a
On 27 November 2025, EU negotiators announced a political deal on the new Payment Services Regulation (PSR) and PSD3. The press releases promised a “historic step” against payment fraud, more protection from online scams and new liability rules for social media platforms. From the perspective of EFRI, and against the
At EFRI, we are contacted almost daily by victims of online investment scams who have been pushed into “investing” in crypto assets. The pattern is always the same: first, victims are convinced to invest in crypto – they either buy crypto on the scammers’ instructions or transfer existing crypto assets
Last week we at EFRI wrote about the Digital Omnibus leak and warned that the European Commission was preparing a stealth attack on the GDPR Since then, two things have happened: The Commission has now officially published its Digital Omnibus proposal. noyb (Max Schrems’ organisation) has released a detailed legal
In the past days, we have received multiple reports that criminals are once again abusing the name European Funds Recovery Initiative (EFRI) to run classic recovery scams. Victims have forwarded emails claiming to come from “EFRI Department” and promising that large sums are “ready for payout” once the victim pays a
The collapse of Wirecard exposed one of the worst regulatory failures in modern European financial history. For years, Germany’s financial watchdog BaFin ignored whistleblowers, dismissed detailed press investigations, attacked journalists instead of fraudsters, and even imposed a short-selling ban that stabilised the share price of what was, in fact, a
Across Europe, fraud is not only on the rise – it is also being systematically concealed. In the UK, only around 13% of fraud against individuals is reported. In Canada, authorities estimate that only 5–10% of scams ever reach the official system, while the real annual loss is believed to
The digital-asset market is slowly running into exactly the same legal questions that have shaped traditional payment law for decades: Who is liable when an inter-exchange transfer fails, is misrouted, or reaches a blocked address? Can doctrines like the Drittschadensliquidation (DSL, third-party damage liquidation) – developed in German banking law
We are now in talks with many victims across Europe as we prepare a collective action, and Payvision is the clearest proof that the EU’s ADR architecture fails fraud victims. What the public record already establishes about Payvision Wind-down and exit: ING announced the phase-out of Payvision’s PSP/acquiring business in
A leaked Commission draft for a so-called “Digital Omnibus” would undermine core GDPR protections under the guise of “simplification.” It would narrow the scope of what constitutes personal data, curtail data-subject rights, create AI-specific carve-outs (even for sensitive data), and relax device-level protections currently anchored in the ePrivacy regime. If
