What does the FATF travel rule require?

The travel rule requires that identifying information about the originator and beneficiary travels alongside a transfer above a threshold value. Applied to virtual assets, it obliges service providers to transmit that data to the receiving provider. The practical difficulty is that the rule assumes a counterparty institution exists, which is not true for transfers to self-custodied wallets — an unresolved tension that most jurisdictions have addressed with partial carve-outs.