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President Joe Biden’s nominees for some divisions of the Treasury Department have made it clear that if elected they will come with a regulatory framework around cryptocurrencies.
One of them is Brian Nelson, nominated for undersecretary of the division of terrorism and financial crimes. Nelson was the first to say that he will prioritize the implementation of new regulations for the cryptocurrency market.
Nelson said that his regulations will be focused against of money laundering or the so-called AML, thus made it known to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, when asked about “the damage caused by robberies”, which referred to recent cyberattacks against large US companies.
Also, spoke positively of the Law against Money Laundering of 2020 considering it reflected the expanded capacity of regulators without cryptocurrencies undermining existing laws. That legislation “provided new authorities or clarified the law, referring to the fact that cryptocurrencies or currency in any form, whether virtual or fiat, are covered by the Bank Secrecy Law.”
Previously, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network applied the Bank Secrecy Law to cryptocurrencies Even if it were a Law approved in . However, it was a powerful tool to regulate, regardless of the shape of the coin, said Brian Nelson.
For his part, Elisabeth Rosenberg, nominee for Under Secretary for Terrorism Financing said her priority would be to establish that AML regulatory requirements that exist now for cryptocurrencies, be consistent.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) proposed regulations in early 2021 so that transactions in digital currency were subject to requirements similar to those used against money laundering or terrorist financing.
The regulations in this area are something that has been waiting since Biden took office and appointed the officials of the corresponding agencies; however, they have not occurred, at all, although there are teams working on the issue. Both financial experts and officials who are responsible for the regulatory aspect expect that the regulations will be issued sooner rather than later.
Although it was recently known that the United States National Securities Commission, the SEC for its acronym in English, according to its list of topics to be covered in its programming of “securities and exchanges commision” for the remainder of 2021, it does not list anything about cryptocurrencies and ETFs (exchange-traded investment fund).
While on the side of the bankers, at the end of May, when the representatives of the main banking entities in the United States appeared before the Senate, one of the important topics on the table was to discuss the implementation of cryptocurrencies and their use in US banking.
Finally for the Department of the Treasury, the priority is to promote measures to ensure that Americans who They pay for goods or services with cryptocurrencies, they do not elude the treasury at the time of the annual tax return. But for the moment, said Department has only required cryptocurrency exchange platforms, to report to the Tax Service Internal all transactions greater than $ 10, 000 Dollars.
