Hawala and money laundering in large scale takes place through the offline means. As everything through the online mode is being recorded it is truly a hard thing to escape limitations. Even if it is done and at some point if there is back tracking it'll be easily caught. To avoid such restrictions and to be on the safer side face to face transaction crossing several hands were done. If $1000 gets into restriction then no business is possible anymore.

$1000 Is too low I think. But even though they mandate something like that, people will always find ways. Cryptocurrency is decentralized so, people can use crypto to get away with $1000 without following what is mandated.

The most important thing to do right now is to get all your coins off of exchanges and in to your own wallets until this is sorted out.

We have seen time and time again in the past various exchanges springing aggressive and unannounced KYC requirements on their users, and refusing to allow users to withdraw their coins unless they comply, essentially holding their coins hostage. It is almost a certainty that various exchanges will introduce new or upgraded KYC requirements because of this ruling, and there will be probably thousands of users who find themselves unable to withdraw their coins. There's also a possibility that some of the less above board exchanges just shut down altogether so as to not expose their own shortcomings, and take and coins they are holding with them. Bear in mind that this is for anyone "sending or receiving" and not "trading", so web wallets will likely also be affected.

If you are not actively trading, and are not using a big exchange which is likely to already be compliant with these rules, then withdraw your coins to a wallet on your own computer, not a web wallet.

Sooner or later we know that this is going to be implemented given that the talks for money laundering is so prominent yet again. Also, the threshold is still a doable amount for small-time traders, but for serious, big-time traders wanting to make a lot of money, of course they need to comply with AML and KYC regulations. Perhaps as more and more regulations (KYC related ones) are being imposed by the governments, more and more interest would be built up for creating proper platforms for a working DEX.

Is anyone really surprised by this? I've always thought that such regulations was inevitable. It was pretty much just a matter of 'when', and here it is. Also, I definitely don't think this is the last of it. There will be more rules to follow as time goes.

The ultimate goal is to make cryptocurrency system similar to banking. Next step would be an obligatory registration of a wallet.

Not me, a lot of cryptocurrency exchanges(Binance, Hitbtc, kucoin are some examples) have implemented the same rules but with a slightly higher minimum.

Others could get away with it temporarily but later on they'll be forced to follow if their exchange gets big.

After a few seconds, the value of those orders suddenly becomes $1000 because of the volatility.  

Well, I don't think that making transactions less than $1k is going to be a big problem. I mean, if you have a couple of thousands of dollars, you can just split them into 2-3 transactions. If you have $10+k, then I guess the risk of money laundering is real, the suspicion is justified, and KYC makes sense. That being said, I would not pass KYC on shady websites, because the risks of identity stealth might be real. I don't usually buy or sell more than a couple of hundreds of dollars worth of cryptos, so for me, this rule is not a problem. But maybe the barrier is too low indeed and should be increased to around $10k. But hey, it's better than it could be, right? FATF could've made KYC obligatory for every transaction, and that would've been way worse.

Bitcoin will survive as digital asset only. Bitcoin will have to be traded like Silver. All the documents needed. Banks will stop all anonymous transactions.