It has been the talk of the crypto world in recent weeks: the United States Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) wants to force cryptocurrencycryptocurrency exchanges to record and even report certain transactions.
Now, it appears that a lot more feedback and concern about the proposed rule has been delivered straight to the source.
Originally, the deadline for public comments was January 4, a quick turnaround following the December 18 announcement. However, following the ire of members of the US Congress about a “rushed process,” particularly over the holidays, the deadline was quietly extended to today. That’s still well short of the 60-day period that US representatives requested.
So, a weird thing happened with the FinCEN rule...a lot more comments were filed this week.
Like, a *LOT* more. 👀
The website only lets you read ~3k, maybe because the rest are duplicates (so not shown) or are still being loaded: https://t.co/6UOSJTxsKT.
In any case, the crypto community took advantage of the opportunity and responded in force to the proposed regulations. As of this writing, just over 5,000 of the comments can be viewed on the website. While they vary widely in size and detail, they are largely critical of the proposed rule, suggesting that it will strike a blow to financial privacy, with many calling it unconstitutional.
Under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), the new rule would force exchanges to record any transaction to a private wallet of $3,000 or more, and report to FinCEN any such transaction of $10,000 or more. The proposed rule was rumored for weeks ahead of last month’s announcement. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong got in front of the news, tweeting out a thread on November 25 about his objections to the expected rule.
Due to an apparent paperwork mixup, the deadline to submit public comments on a proposed US Treasury rule that would enable some financial surveillance of private cryptocurrency wallets was “quietly extended” until tomorrow, January 7.
Four organizations leading the charge against the proposed rule decided to use the extra time to rally the public today.
FinCEN rulemaking AMA on r/cryptocurrency
Our @valkenburgh is answering questions along with @EFF @fightfortheftr @BlockchainAssnhttps://t.co/...
“If this crypto regulation comes out, it would be a terrible legacy and have long-standing negative impacts for the US,” Armstrong wrote. In the early days of the internet there were people who called for it to be regulated like the phone companies. Thank goodness they didn't.”
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