US Treasury Secretary Shares Trump’s Concerns On Crypto

The US Treasury Secretary is in the coming altcoin news for stressing out President Donald Trump’s concerns on the use of cryptocurrency in order to finance illicit activity. The Secretary Steven Mnuchin also stressed the role of enforcing FinCEN regulations with respect to the organizations that are dealing with crypto.

Mnuchin made the remarks at a press conference on July 15. He called the use of cryptocurrencies to fund illicit activity – addressing it as a national security issue and stating that billions of dollars have so far been used for this purpose. The US Treasury Secretary was confident in this, stating the following:

“Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have been exploited to support billions of dollars of illicit activity, like cybercrime, tax evasion, extortion, randomware, illicit drugs, human trafficking … This is indeed a national security issue.”

In response to questions from the press and journalists from the best cryptocurrency news sites, Mnuchin further commented and talked about the role of crypto in financing crime. The US Treasury Secretary said:

“I think to a large extent, these cryptocurrencies have been dominated by illicit activities and speculation.”

Secretary Mnuchin also commented on Trump’s latest tweet storm (his Twitter posts on crypto) and stated that ““As the President has said: ‘Bitcoin is highly volatile and based on thin air’” and “Treasury takes very seriously the role of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency.”

As previously reported in our latest cryptocurrency news, President Trump tweeted out a series of anti-crypto and anti-Bitcoin remarks on July 12. This came after his “Social Media Summit” for conservative personalities. Trump said that the value of crypto is “highly volatile and based on thin air” and that as such, it can “facilitate unlawful behavior.” This is why the US Treasury Secretary felt the need to explain the issues further.

As Mnuchin said, digital financial services are bound by the same Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism policies as traditional institutions such as banks. On top of this, the US Treasury Secretary noted that any crypto transmitters must comply with the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) as well as register with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), which is a bureau of the Treasury and the federal regulator which implements the BSA in practice.