US Crypto Tsar Promises Crackdown on Digital Platforms (ft.com) 32
The top US cryptocurrency enforcement tsar is promising a crackdown on illicit behaviour on digital platforms, saying the scale of crypto crime has grown "significantly" in the past four years. From a report: The Department of Justice is targeting crypto exchanges along with the "mixers and tumblers" that obscure the trail of transactions, Eun Young Choi, who was appointed director of the agency's national cryptocurrency enforcement team last year, told the Financial Times in an interview. The DoJ is targeting companies that commit crimes themselves or allow them to happen, such as enabling money laundering, she said. "But on top of that, they're allowing for all the other criminal actors to easily profit from their crimes and cash out in ways that are obviously problematic to us," she added. "And so we hope that by focusing on those types of platforms, we're going to have a multiplier effect."
Choi said the focus on platforms would "send a deterrent message" to businesses that are skirting anti-money laundering or client identification rules, and who were not investing in solid compliance and risk mitigation procedures. Choi heads a new unit focused on criminal misuse of digital assets as the US under the administration of President Joe Biden has emerged as one of the jurisdictions with the toughest stance on crypto worldwide. "We're seeing the scale and the scope of digital assets being used in a variety of illicit ways grow significantly over the last, say, four years," she said. "I think that is concurrent with the increase of its adoption by the public writ large."
Choi said the focus on platforms would "send a deterrent message" to businesses that are skirting anti-money laundering or client identification rules, and who were not investing in solid compliance and risk mitigation procedures. Choi heads a new unit focused on criminal misuse of digital assets as the US under the administration of President Joe Biden has emerged as one of the jurisdictions with the toughest stance on crypto worldwide. "We're seeing the scale and the scope of digital assets being used in a variety of illicit ways grow significantly over the last, say, four years," she said. "I think that is concurrent with the increase of its adoption by the public writ large."
Not a crypto csar (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Crapto"? I like it! You should always use adequate descriptive terms when possible.
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Strictly speaking he is in charge of crypto currencies, not cryptography. This repeated abuse of the term "crypto" is better spelled as "crapto".
Cue the new "craptocoin" product dump in 3..2...
(I'd make sure you get a slice of that cow pie for giving them such a shitty-but-marketable idea if I were you...)
Just enforcing existing law (Score:5, Informative)
Full archive link [archive.is].
The TL;DR is that they're identifying non-compliant exchanges and enforcing existing money laundering law on them.
Yep, and that's it for Crypto (Score:5, Insightful)
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Crypto cannot crash the economy (Score:2)
If every crypto exchange collapsed tomorrow and the top 25 cryptos went to $0, it would barely register on the economy compared to what would happen if the SEC simply enforced the law against naked short selling in the stock market.
THAT would cause all Hell to break loose because there is an epidemic of naked short selling, and the way the laws are written the shorts' obligations transfer to brokerages and clear
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Indeed. This is just completely standard regulatory requirement for financial services providers. It took a while, but in a sense it means crap-coins are now recognized as money-like. A big win for the crap-coin proponents that have claimed money-like nature for a long time! They finally have some legitimacy. Of course, that comes with obligations. Oooops.
News (Score:3, Insightful)
"Federal government promises to do something that screws people and gives the federal government more money."
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"Federal government promises to do something that screws people and gives the federal government more money."
"Moron does not understand the real world and claims complete nonsense."
Any financial service provider is regulated. They are regulated because they did wayyyy too much damage in the past. This simply means that crapcoins are now recognized as money-like in some sense and that is what idiots like you have been claiming all along. Got your wish! Congrats!
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1. Does it screw people?
2. Does it give the government more money?
The answer to both of those is yes. And if you're buying into crypto scams and screwing yourself it's your own fault. Crypto never fleeced anyone that wasn't trying to fleece someone else.
>"Moron does not understand the real world and claims complete nonsense."
Based on this and your past comments, you must be a really miserable person. That's why when you set me as your "enemy" (lol) I friended you. I think you need it
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You're forgetting something: the Fed. Crypto appeals to people who have seen how the government creates inflation, and would like to have a stable store of value that doesn't depend on the solvency of a group of individuals who honestly believe they can spend their way out of debt (i.e. Congress).
Crypto currencies appeal to the same group of people who were buying gold in the 80's.
Yes, opportunists jumped on the bandwagon, but the original notion of crypto currencies (as promulgated by Bruce Schneier,
A wildly variable store of value [Re:News] (Score:2)
You're forgetting something: the Fed. Crypto appeals to people who have seen how the government creates inflation, and would like to have a stable store of value
But, turns out that instead, cryptocurrency has a history of being a wildly variable store of value.
Gambling is the exact opposite of a stable store of value.
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Thanks for the laugh! I almost fell for it.
Since I don't have any mod points, please accept a virtual +1 for your humorous content.
Crypto is fleece to lots of innocent people (Score:2)
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Protecting small clueless investors is not actually done for any moral reasons, but because it is really bad for the economy and for the stability of society to have a lot of people lose their life's savings. That is one reason for regulation. Another one is to make it hard for (more-or-less) organized crime to operate and do money-laundering, because that would be also bad for the stability of society. Of course, there is also an aspect of reducing money-laundering for tax evasion, which also serves to kee
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>I guess what I'm saying is you're doing classic victim blaming and that's kind of fucked up.
Investors aren't victims if they're informed about the risks and consent to it. If they invested in crypto without understanding that it's HUGELY volatile then that's on them. I only have sympathy for people who were actively duped, and that happens constantly with the highly regulated existing market as well. Far more often too, and with greater consequences.
>You live in the same society as everyone else and
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I set people as "enemy" as a marker of "may claim nonsense". It is just a hint to myself to look more carefully before responding. If you have trouble with that, my condolences.
The thing here is that I actually know what regulation does and how it works, because one of my (part-time) jobs is auditor in a regulated financial industry.
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If I were to argue against you in the way you treat me, I'd begin with "moron that knows nothing about how Slashdot's friend system works tries lying about how he uses it." Should I do that? Do you think that'd likely lead to a productive or unproductive discussion?
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Slashdot does not have a "friend system". All it has is tags you can set.
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Moron spreads lies about things he doesn't understand: https://slashdot.org/faq/frien... [slashdot.org]
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Mainly keeping organized crime in check is one of the reasons. Not identifying who made big currency transactions prevents having control on knowing how you made your money and what can you buy out, pricing everybody else out of the market.
Re:News (Score:4, Insightful)
>Not identifying who made big currency transactions prevents having control on knowing how you made your money and what can you buy out,
Didn't the federal government lose track of $2T in the middle east, or somesuch? And isn't there some scandal about Presidential candidates accepting millions in foreign bribes by funneling it through family members? Something tells me they're not actually motivated by accountability, but by taking money from regular people.
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It's criminals all the way down... (Score:1, Insightful)
They don't like crypto because they don't control it.
Just as soon as there is complete transparency on the financial markets, the finances of our elected officials and corporate tax avoidance schemes I might be on board. Until then they can GTFO.