The White House prepares to regulate cryptocurrency trading
As if cracking down on the cryptocurrency trade in China wasn't bad enough news for crypto investors, now the White House is preparing an executive order to go down the regulation path, too, reports Bloomberg. "People familiar with the matter" tip that the Biden administration wants to engage all relevant government entities - from financial regulators and the national security agencies to the National Science Foundation - in a far-reaching push to oversee the $2 trillion crypto trading market.
Before you blame Elon Musk and his Shiba Inu Coin antics, know that the move to regulate trading in cryptocurrencies and other digital asset classes like non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has been brewing for a while. The US authorities have been gathering an ever-increasing amount of worrying signals from the crypto market, tip the insiders. These range from NFT scam complaints by regular investors to ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure. That's not to mention crypto is often used by bad actors as an untraceable payment system, forcing the government's hand.
While President Biden's administration prepares to engage in coordinated Bitcoin or Ethereum regulation and even appoint a "Crypto Tsar," the relevant agencies are not sitting still in wait. The Justice Department, for instance, unveiled a National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team last week to deal with recovery from the type of ransomware attacks that brought down the Colonial Pipeline in 2020.
The final shape of the executive order is still in flux, but it will surely make crypto news when it lands. After all, the White House has to be careful not to stifle financial innovation yet provide sufficient enough investor protection against market volatility and outright scams.
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