Crackdown on Cryptocurrency Quietly Passes in Russia Sanctions Bill
Little did anyone notice ...
In the foreign sanctions bill signed by President Donald Trump last week, a hidden mandate is present that asks foreign governments to monitor cryptocurrency circulations as a measure to combat "illicit finance trends" in an effort to "combat terrorism."
From Coindesk:
The U.S. Congress cleared the bill late last month imposing sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea. It was a politically controversial development, given ongoing investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, and the stated opposition of the Trump administration to the legislation.
Trump ultimately signed the bill into law last week, though he sharply criticized the measure in an accompanying signing statement.
Notably for the blockchain industry, however, is that the bill includes a mandate for the development of a national security strategy aimed at "combating the financing of terrorism and related forms of illicit finance."
One provision, which focuses on research into "illicit finance trends," mentions cryptocurrencies as an area of study.
The text calls for:
"[A] discussion of and data regarding trends in illicit finance, including evolving forms of value transfer such as so-called cryptocurrencies, other methods that are computer, telecommunications, or internet-based, cybercrime, or any other threats that the Secretary may choose to identify."
Coinivore is reporting that the bill requires the governments to develop a “national security strategy” to combat the “financing of terrorism and related forms of illicit finance.”
Governments will be further required to monitor “data regarding trends in illicit finance, including evolving forms of value transfer such as so-called cryptocurrencies."
Also, according to the bill, an initial draft strategy is expected to come before Congress within the next year and will see input from U.S. financial regulators, the Department of Homeland Security, and the State Department.
If the U.S. is willing to impose such a measure on foreign governments, it is clear that a crypto crackdown could be not too far around the corner domestically.
Let us know what you think in the comment section below.
Yeah always under the terrorism....that they created to scare everyone into giving away there freedoms that we thought we had but didn't really. This is the deep state not the goverment and i do think as well they want one currency and a cashless society. which is bad for the people.. there system is bad for us but without actual physical money be easy to cut anyone off from the system. but thats how they roll..people are waking up and they are losing it... I'm not really into cryptos but i am into gold and silver and it's a real physical asset one they cannot close down or even try to.. been around Longer than any other system of wealth.
I don't think they can do a damn thing about it, sure they can make it harder to buy online, but they won't succeed, people are trading their fake paper for crypto and then trading that for either silver or gold, or just holding on to it in an offline wallet that nobody can access, so who cares what they try to do, people are sick and tired of being played by the governments bullshit paper dollars, now that they are trading them in for crypto, it's killing the fiat currency, good....
I agree to the extent they'll impose more regulations on the exchanges to impede buys/sells & transfers over IPs under sanction. But they know as well those roadblocks can be skirted.
However, in this age of complete totalitarian monitoring of all worldwide data flow, and our own intelligence agencies' demonstrations of the tools they can inject to spy on any & all they so choose, this only suggests to me that the government will use any "false flag" scenario such as this "Russian Election hack" as the means to expand their budget and staffing to wage full scale war on non-governmental approved financial transactions. The harder they make it, the harder it'll become for free-minded citizens of the world to use it.