Treasury and Fed kill $250 cross-border rule, keep $3,000 crypto threshold

The U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and the Federal Reserve Board have pulled the plug on a 2020 proposal that would have slashed the recordkeeping and information-sharing threshold for cross-border transfers, dropping it from $3,000 to $250. The joint notice was filed Friday, Nov. 6, and lands for publication Monday, Nov. 9, when the withdrawal officially takes effect. The agencies say they will take no further action on it.

The scrapped plan wasn't small. It would have forced banks and nonbank financial institutions to collect, keep and hand off data on much smaller transfers that start or end outside the United States. It also would have rewritten regulatory definitions to explicitly cover domestic and cross-border transactions in convertible virtual currency and digital assets with legal tender status — a direct swipe at crypto's smaller payments.

This closes out the last pending piece of a rollback in the crypto space. FinCEN had already shelved its separate 2020 proposal aimed at unhosted wallets, plus its 2023 plan for enhanced reporting on international crypto mixing. The travel-rule proposal was the one still hanging in the air.

Important for anyone hoping for a loophole: nothing was repealed. The existing Recordkeeping and Travel Rules stay exactly as they are, with the $3,000 threshold intact for covered transfers, cross-border included. Under the current nonbank rule, a sending institution must collect and retain the sender's name and address, the amount, the execution date and the recipient's institution. The Travel Rule then requires that information to follow the transfer to the next institution, with recipient details when received, subject to exceptions.

Crypto exchanges don't get a free pass here. FinCEN's 2019 guidance treats convertible virtual currency transactions as transmittals of funds that can fall under the Travel Rule at $3,000 or more, or the crypto equivalent. The required info has to be obtained or provided before or at the time of the transfer — and it can ride in a separate message rather than on the same rails as the assets.

As for why the agencies bailed? They cited the proposal's age and a changed crypto landscape. More than five years had passed, they said, making fresh public feedback worthwhile before adopting anything similar. The notice nods to maturing crypto markets and emerging legal frameworks, name-checking the GENIUS Act's payment-stablecoin framework and the July 2025 White House digital-assets report. Future crypto amendments are still on the table — but the notice promises that “no final rule will be issued without an additional opportunity for public comment.”