What Senate Meeting Holds This Time for Crypto & Financial Crimes?

• Yesterday’s meeting of the Senate panel made decisions after hours of discussions on crypto and crimes relating to digital assets.
• What all  points were discussed by the Sen. Sherrod Brown at the meeting.
• Sen. Elizabeth Warren claims that crypto related laws governing anti-money laundering are the need of time.

How could the federal government act to form a shield against digital assets like cryptocurrency, this was a matter of discussion at yesterday’s meeting of the Senate panel.

What all was discussed at the hearing?

Discussion at the hearing started with Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), chair of the Senate Banking, housing and Urban Affairs Committee, highlighting the setbacks caused by the recent industry events. As per the announcement on February 3, 2023, the senators would gather on February 14 to discuss “Crypto Crash: Why Financial System Safeguards are Needed for Digital Assets.”

According to a news website, the hearing came two months after the federal lawmakers, convened about the crash of Sma Bankman-Fried led crypto exchange FTX in mid-December 2022. Mr Brown said recently, What a difference a year makes. The cryptocurrency industry spent a whopping $54 million on eight ads promising Americans untold riches and a chance to make history,”

Looking from the global aspects, in the 14 months period till Q1 2022, bad actors stole over $1 billion affecting more than 46,000 people in crypto-frauds, noted the Federal Trade Commission. These facts are giving nightmares to the people trusting blockchain tech, which promised extreme security earlier, at the cost of cybercrimes and money laundering. 

Looking from the global aspects 

Earlier this month Interpol has made its way out to police the metaverse. Jurgen Stock, secretary general of the global police agency is working on how to regulate and stop  crime in the metaverse according to BBC reports. He said that “Criminals are sophisticated and professional in very quickly adapting to any new technological tool that is available to commit crime.”

Whereas, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) turned the hearing into an opportunity to talk about the anti-money laundering crypto law. She started with “Big-time financial criminals love crypto,” then remarked that “Just last year — just in one year — crypto was the payment method of choice for international drug traffickers, who raked in over a billion dollars through crypto.”

She jotted down how North Korean fraudsters made $1.7 billion, being ended up in a nuclear program. Also, a loss of $500 million was lifted with the grace of ransomware hackers. Over $20 billion was wiped out from the entire crypto markets due to illegal transactions in 2022, according to media reports.

Reports from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis keeps an eye over all the ransomware transactions handled through cryptocurrency. It laid down that more than $692 million were transacted as extortion in 2020, which doubled in 2021, told the company report in 2022. 

Nancy J. Allen is a crypto enthusiast and believes that cryptocurrencies inspire people to be their own banks and step aside from traditional monetary exchange systems. She is also intrigued by blockchain technology and its functioning.

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