Despite conventional financial wisdom that heightened regulation discourages innovation by generating needlessly expensive and time-consuming red tape, a growing number of voices in the fintech industry have been calling out for more oversight from the federal government. Even staunchly free-market entrepreneurs have pointed out that investors won’t participate in a market beset by fraud and crashes, with cryptocurrencies as a whole plummeting in value up to 74% last year.
It appears that the Biden administration has heard these concerns from the market and is willing to step up its game. Following a string of similar announcements on crypto regulation, in late January the White House released a roadmap to addressing the risks of cryptocurrency. In the document, a plan is laid out for empowering federal institutions to keep crypto and other digital assets as safe and stable as any other investment, with calls for Congress to pursue its own legislative oversight more aggressively in the near future.
“While the United States is already a global leader in fighting money laundering and terrorist financing,” the roadmap’s authors wrote, “enforcement agencies are devoting increased resources to combatting illicit activities involving digital assets. In the coming months, the Administration will also unveil priorities for digital assets research and development, which will help the technologies powering cryptocurrencies protect consumers by default.”
