New Enforcement Tools in Regulating Cryptocurrency

We can’t say they didn’t warn us. Earlier this year, the U.S. government said it would scrutinize the cryptocurrency markets and their relationship with banks. The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency warned financial institutions that cryptocurrency was being used for fraud and money laundering, and posed contagion risks, concentration risks and a challenge to existing governance mechanisms.

The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) newly-formed National Cryptocurrency Enforcement taskforce (NCE) has now entered the fray, deploying an arsenal of new tools to ferret out money laundering and seize assets of cryptocurrency exchanges.