America taps 150+ prosecutors to fight cryptocurrency crime

The US Department of Justice has tapped more than 150 federal prosecutors to form a team keenly focused on cracking down on cryptocurrency-related crimes, it announced on Friday. Dubbed the Digital Asset Coordinators Network, this group will be led by the DoJ's National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET). The assembled …

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest crime of all is ransomware, enabled by cryptocurrency. Others important categories include sanction busting and hiding taxable income.

Those could be largely solved by banning banks from touching crypto.

As for people getting crypto duped, it's just throwing good money after bad to investigate and follow up on those.

[Paul Hovnanian]

"Those could be largely solved by banning banks from touching crypto."

Yes, but that was one of the design goals of crypto in the first place. A means of conducting transactions not dependent on a central authority. Banks, and the people who want banking involvement in crypto are just the people who want to arbitrage it to make a fast buck.

[Shalghar]

And there in this article we can see why it is direly needed to train at least some personnel in the very basics of the topic.

"It also calls for the exploration of a US Central Bank Digital Currency – a digital dollar of some kind – that can be used for payments perhaps as an alternative to independent crypto-coins and tokens."

Crypto is designed to be a non country / politics bound currency. Of course that will require work as we live in times where political/financial blackmail and extortion as well as war with economics - in short "sanctions" are used heavily, no matter whats destroyed or who is harmed and no matter if the desired target can be reached with that sanction seppuku / harakiri.

.

Just use the power of blackmail against each broker and bank, expelling everyone from s.w.i.f.t. who dares touch the unclean bitcoins so that those affected will have to wait until the rest of the world has build up a non US controlled interbanking system. Or just cheat around like usual.

Cryptocurrencies have one advantage against currencies using s.w.i.f.t. : no single political entity can sanction/steal your coin or "freeze" your wallets.

[vtcodger]

150 lawyers

So, US taxpayers are going to pay to train 150 lawyers in the intricacies of a bizarre technology frequently used to launder illicitly acquired funds and to enable/perpetrate other frauds. What could possibly go wrong?

[VoiceOfTruth]

Crimes

-> prevent illicit financial crimes.

In comparison to licit financial crimes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Crimes

> In comparison to licit financial crimes.

You are a lawyer and I claim my 0.005 bitcoin.

[Youngone]

Re: Crimes

Wow, 0.005 bitcoin?

That's worth $165,

$140,

$102,

$87,.

Never mind.

[that one in the corner]

"Digital-asset crimes ... require a certain level of competency"

As opposed to other types of crime where the DoJ are perfectly happy to use any old incompetents they find hanging around the office?

[Winkypop]

“cryptocurrency crime”

So very nearly a tautology.

[Marty McFly]

The real reason...

"....better protect folks and businesses from the risks of digital assets, keep the country's economy stable and secure, and prevent illicit financial crimes..."

Protect folks and businesses from the risks: Isn't it their risk to take? The government will use this as the excuse to try and control crypto currency. We are here to save you from yourself.

Keep the country's economy stable & secure: Okay, I'll buy that from the government's perspective. The government is worried about losing control of the financial system. They cannot inflate the crypto currency supply to fund their schemes. This is how they manipulate everything with fiat currency. Crypto currency's whole purpose is to take back control of our financial system.

Prevent illicit financial crimes: Riiight. Because Illicit financial crimes cannot be done with good ol' US dollars. Another scare tactic.

What is the government going to do, shut down Bitcoin? Go ahead, send the 150 agents to storm the Bitcoin headquarters. Take it all down. Lock up all the executives. Freeze all their digital assets. Unplug all their computers. Send in drones to crush their data center into tiny pieces of rubble. Yeehaw, that will stop all this crypto stuff, totally, for sure!

Bottom line: The government is hiring 150 agents to educate politicians on what the rest of us already know. Crypto currency cannot be stopped. The only thing government can do is regulate the on & off ramps (USD to BTC, etc).