TL;DR Breakdown
- Joe Biden target crypto bad actors in new countering corruption document.
- DOJ sets up new unit to primarily handle crypto crime cases.
US President Joe Biden has targeted cryptocurrencies in the newly published United States Strategy on Countering Corruption document, which addresses govt anti-corruption policies.
The published document contains how the US govt intends to deal with corruption under five pillars. The third pillar particularly speaks on cryptocurrencies through the Department of Justice (DOJ).
“DOJ will utilize a newly established task force, the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, to focus specifically on complex investigations and prosecutions of criminal misuses of cryptocurrency,” the document reads.
The task force primary focus is on “crimes committed by virtual currency exchanges, mixing and tumbling services, and money laundering infrastructure actors.”
Joe Biden and cryptocurrencies
The US president has been at the frontline of delivering cryptocurrencies out of the hands of bad actors.
Apparently, the president was irked by successive ransomware attacks on critical American facilities (Colonial pipeline and JBS), where both organizations had to pay crypto ransoms before regaining access to their computers.
The attacks on the two facilities made the DOJ mull about raising ransomware threats to terrorism threats.
In the summer, the administration’s crypto task force began to hit the headlines following a virtual briefing with Congress in June. At the time, deputy national security adviser Anne Neuberger said the administration was working to quell the use of cryptocurrencies in illicit financial activity.
As part of the planned effort, the task force will analyze and trace crypto transfers that affected companies and institutions have sent—or will send—to perpetrators of ransomware attacks.
Beyond this, Biden has also been a rallying point in the international scene mobilizing Russian President Vladimir Putin and other world leaders at the G7 to act on the criminalities of crypto, ransomware, and other cyber threats.
