Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
The Almighty Buck

Will Calls to Scrutinize Digital-Currency Purchases of Oil Bring New Regulations For Crypto? (yahoo.com) 16

Last month Reuters reported that Venezuela's state-run oil company "plans to increase digital currency usage in its crude and fuel exports as the U.S. reimposes oil sanctions on the country, three people familiar with the plan said." [The oil company] since last year had been slowly moving oil sales to USDT, a digital currency also known as Tether whose value is pegged to the U.S. dollar and designed to maintain a stable value. The return of oil sanctions is speeding up the shift, a move to reduce the risk of sale proceeds getting frozen in foreign bank accounts due to the measures, the people said...

Tether said in an email it respects the U.S. Treasury's list of sanctioned entities and "is committed to working to ensure sanction addresses are frozen promptly."

This week Reuters reported that now experts are saying the situation "will require greater scrutiny by regulators and law enforcement." They spoke to Kristofer Doucett, national security leader at U.S. blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis, who said "Structures must be set up to combat this type of money laundering." Reuters writes: Technology for digital transactions is changing fast and transactions are rapidly growing in developing regions including Latin America and Africa benefiting people without access to the banking system. But some corrupt governments are moving faster, making it difficult to prevent fraud, the experts said. Doucette and Sigal Mandelker, a lawyer who previously worked at the U.S. Treasury Department, said during a conference organized by the Wilson Center in Washington that the U.S. administration is making efforts to increase regulation and encourage other countries to improve supervision.
Slashdot reader RossCWilliams asks a loaded question. Whether this is "the beginning of the end of unregulated cryptocurrencies... the recognition of cryptocurrency as a national security threat that threatens international financial controls."

Will Calls to Scrutinize Digital-Currency Purchases of Oil Bring New Regulations For Crypto?

Comments Filter:
  • The whole point of crypto is to create a monetary system outside of government control. If government can freeze your crypto, what are you even doing?
    Just use bitcoin or litecoin, government can't freeze proof-of-work cryptos. This has the added benefit of using something a bit more stable than the US dollar, which doesn't have a fixed supply because they keep printing more of it. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se... [stlouisfed.org]
    • This has the added benefit of using something a bit more stable than the US dollar, which doesn't have a fixed supply because they keep printing more of it.

      They also destroy it, but they should be printing more of it (and not destroying the same amount) when GDP expands.

    • Crypto is so tainted by fraud these days, that it is hard to use. If one uses BTC, it means a huge buy-in and transaction fee, so it isn't feasible for day to day transactions. Using an altcoin that might be better may put people in danger of a 51% attack.

      What would be nice if someone designed a cryptocurrency to be a Bitcoin version 2.0. However, it wouldn't be just for their profit. It can't have pre-mining, pyramid/Ponzi type scheming where early adopters get all the goodies by an exponential amount,

Oh, so there you are!

Working...