Buckle up your seatbelts, folks, it looks like U.S. regulators will be unveiling a whole host of crypto regulations soon.
At a Senate hearing on Trump’s proposed budget, U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan asked Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin how an increase in his department’s budget would “assist the department in monitoring suspicious cryptocurrency transactions and prosecuting terrorists and other criminal organizations financing illicit activities with cryptocurrency?”
After thanking the committee for previous budget increases, Mnuchin said that they’ve been “spending a lot of time” on crypto, both “on an inter-agency basis and with regulators,” adding:
“…we’re about to roll out some significant new requirements at FinCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network). We want to make sure that technology moves forward but on the other hand, we want to make sure that cryptocurrencies aren’t used for the equivalent of old Swiss secret number bank accounts.”
Mnuchin continued that he and his department shares the Senator’s concern and that she’ll “be seeing a lot of work coming out very quickly.”
CoinDesk notes that FinCEN director Kenneth Blanco has been warning crypto businesses that he and his agency views most crypto transactions as subject to existing rules, especially anti-money laundering laws. Last autumn, FinCEN and other regulators signed a joint statement, highlighting that banking laws still apply to digital assets.
Photo: Office of the President-elect
