The US Government Intensifies Crackdown On Cryptocurrencies To Minimise Crime

After the South Korean government announced that it would ban cryptocurrency trading, the top players in the crypto world, bitcoin, etherium, and ripple experienced a plunge in price. However, bitcoin appears to be recovering slowly from the fall; yet, stakeholders of digital currencies have been warned that they should prepare for a greater fall. According to Bill Browder, a financier, the global governments will invent regulatory measures on all cryptocurrencies because crypto-trading provides a safe means for criminal activities to persist without investigation or tracking.

The central banks regulate currencies based on factors that affect the economic situation and political structures at the time. Even so, it is easy to track any illegal inflow of funds because there is a rigid system that monitors cash movement. In a similar fashion, an individual is unlikely to withdraw a sum as huge as $10,000 from a bank without a proper documentation and if possible without a notice from the US government. These are just procedures to ensure sanity and minimize money laundry and other forms of crime. With digital currencies, however, there is no limit to the worth of bitcoin or any other currency.  The financier said:

“Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are a way for bad dictators or criminals to bypass sanctions and so from my perspective, and I think from the perspective of other politicians around the world, governments are not going to allow that to happen.”

Moreover, the Hermitage CEO, Mr. Browder believes that regulating cryptocurrencies as the financier suggested will bring to the ultimate end of bitcoin and the others. The increased amount of transparency and loss of freedom and autonomy in trading will be a turn off for the stakeholders. These are the major factors that characterize the trading and are the contributing factors of its popularity. “Eventually it’s going to be regulated and as it gets regulated, one of the prime aspects of bitcoin will disappear, which is the libertarian freedom”, he said further.

While it’s arguably to some extent that some people keep bitcoin and other crypto for the sake of secrecy and as means to bypass regulatory measures and sanctions, a host of many others trade in digital currencies because of the value attached to them. Contrary to fiat currencies that lose value over time, it’s not the same with digital currencies. For some illegal reasons, they tend to soar in value over time, which is why some stakeholder preserve them as a means to secure their future.  In fact, Stripe has ditched bitcoin support payment because many users now see them as an asset rather than a means of payment.

The long-held ideas that digital currencies will be a means to help people do transactions online and bypass outrageous charges have been defeated as the virtual currency is better suited to be an asset other than a means of payment.