Connor Loewen

🔴News outlets are touting a recent report by the US Treasury on the combatting of illicit finance in digital currencies as a "win for privacy." This is incorrect. While the report notes that "lawful users of digital assets may leverage mixers to enable financial privacy when transacting through public blockchains," the majority of language on mixers highlights their use in terrorist financing and other illicit activities, as well as the challenges mixers introduce for law enforcement. As the Treasury states: "Criminals commonly use tools like mixing [...] to introduce challenges for investigators attempting to trace illicit digital assets, frustrating law enforcement investigations as well as DASPs’ transaction monitoring and tracing efforts." While the report issues no new recommendations on the future of mixers, it notes that the Treasury has already proposed a rule to regulate mixers under the PATRIOT Act that it has been tasked to finalize by the White House. According to the report, the Treasury has additionally adopted the following recommendations: Treasury will "incentivize the development and integration of digital identity tools aimed at countering illicit finance" Treasury will "explore working with Congress on ways to better enable third-party service providers to conduct identity verifications" Treasury will "encourage industry stakeholders to develop open-source and standardized APIs for essential compliance functions" Regarding Decentralized Finance (DeFi), the Treasury further recommends that: "Congress should consider specifying actors within the decentralized finance ecosystem that should be subject to AML/CFT obligations" "Congress should consider how to best safeguard the U.S. financial system from money laundering threats that originate abroad, including those in the decentralized finance ecosystem," that should ***"include adding a sixth special measure*** to Section 311 [PATRIOT Act] authorizing Treasury to prohibit, or impose conditions upon, certain 'transmittals of funds' that are not tied to a correspondent banking relationship." "Congress should consider creating digital asset-specific financial institution types or subtypes within the BSA, such that the new types or subtypes would be subject to AML/CFT obligations" "FinCEN should evaluate whether and how its existing guidance related to the digital asset sector, including guidance issued in 2013 and 2019, should be rescinded, modified, or updated to reflect legislative and regulatory changes"

The latest communique from the RCMP to firearms owners - and I have thoughts on it. One of those thoughts is "this reads like a desperate plea to increase participation in the ASFCP." But I have others that I think may be more important, so an article will be out soon.