By Shelly Melancon (Switzerland)
The Joe Biden administration has released a document outlining how they plan to fight against corruption. The novel move by the administration maps out the government’s plan to fight the menace under five main umbrellas. The third is focused on making sure that those who participate in corruption are held accountable, focusing on cryptocurrencies.
Roles Of New Cryptocurrency Task Force
The administration, for this purpose, has created a new task force under the Department of Justice. The released document reveals the purpose of the task force. The task force named the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team will work to tackle difficult cases and prosecute abuses of cryptocurrency.
The task force is to focus on criminal activities by cryptocurrency exchanges as well as cryptocurrency money laundering schemes and other illicit activities. According to the document, the decision was a long time coming. The document also reveals how committed the Biden administration is to tackling inherent risks in the crypto space to set up a special team for the purpose.
Reasons Behind The Concern
The administration has long been interested in fighting criminal activities enabled by cryptocurrencies. In July of this year, the administration had formed a task force to combat the rising cases of ransomware attacks. The ransomware task force was formed to fight cybercrime and track the cryptocurrency transactions commonly used by attackers.
The administration at the time had a virtual meeting with members of Congress to discuss the matter. The plan involves the team tracing cryptocurrency transfers from companies whose systems have been hijacked to the criminals. Ransomware attacks have plagued many institutions within the last year. One of the notable ones was the attack on Colonial Pipeline in May, leading to the loss of about $90 million in Bitcoin.
The deputy national security adviser Anne Neuberget revealed that the administration plans to stop criminals from using cryptocurrencies in criminal activities. The proliferation of ransomware attacks in the country had not gone unnoticed by the administration. The Department of Justice placed ransomware attacks in the same priority level as terrorist activities after the attack on Colonial Pipeline.
Aside from ransomware attacks, the United States has other reasons to do more policing of the cryptocurrency space. The United States Treasury Department had released a report in October stating that cryptocurrencies could weaken the strength of sanctions placed by the United States on other nations. The United States issues sanctions to Nations it believes have engagement in Human Rights abuses, terrorism, and other illicit activities.
The United States has close to 10,000 sanctions on countries like North Korea. The report by the Treasury revealed that cryptocurrencies could be used to cover International transactions which oppose the United States sanctions. In addition, the report disclosed that competitors are attempting to build payment alternatives on blockchain technology that reduce the relevance of the dollar in international transactions.
The report proposed to make sure that United States sanctions could be enforced and adapted with the new technology. The release also pushed for the advancement of the sanction regime. It called for the department to familiarize itself with the new technology to allow for it to know how to advance it better.
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