Trump’s administration dissolves the unit in the Ministry of Justice, which was responsible for investigating the crimes of cryptocurrency and criticized Biden’s administration as too aggressive against the rapidly growing industry.
In a note issued by the end of Monday, Todd Blanc, a representative of the Prosecutor’s General, condemned his predecessors for the investigation of cryptocurrency operators in a way he called “poorly conceived and poorly executed”. Instead, he ordered the Ministry to narrow the focus of cryptocurrency investigations on crimes such as fraud, drug trafficking and terrorism.
The Directive is in line with the wide embrace of President Trump during his campaign and office when he moves to release recovery.
The Trump family has expanded their business interests in the field, including the establishment of a company crypto, World Liberty Financial. Shortly before joining the office, Mr. Trump issued his own memecoin. And Trump Media & Technology Group, the Social Media, in which he is a majority shareholder, said he was planning to present a number of investment products of digital assets this year.
The Directive of the Ministry of Justice monitors similar steps in the Securities and Stock Exchange Commission, which has rejected litigation and the waiting investigation concerning matters in which the companies did not register as stock exchanges. Many SEC lawyers have left the regulatory agency in these cases.
SEC also drastically reduced the staffing of the cryptonus unit. For politics, SEC said it would not try to regulate MEMECOINS because the novelty of digital assets are not securities.
In its remark, the Ministry of Justice accused Biden’s administration of the “ruthless regulation strategy by prosecution” towards the world of digital currencies.
In the future, Mr. Blanche wrote, prosecutors should only follow cryptocurrency cases “that include behavior that victimizes investors”, fraud, hacking and using a crypt to finance other crimes such as fentanyl or trading people. Such prosecution, the note said: “They are important for restoring stolen funds to customers, building investors’ confidence in the security of the market with digital asset and growth in digital assets.”
He ordered a group of prosecutors who investigate the integrity of the market and the main fraud to cease to recover cryptocurrencies and instead focus on immigration and fraud with the supplier.
He also dissolved the national team for the recovery of cryptocurrency, a group within the headquarters of the Ministry of Justice, which has been created in recent years to resolve these cases. US lawyers’ offices in the US can still carry out cases concerning the cryptocurrency investigation, Mr. Blanche wrote.
It seems that the new approach should have prevented cases such as the one that was filed in 2023 against the founder of Binance Changpeng Zhao for violating the Banking Secrets Act, which requires financial institutions to verify their customers’ identity and show suspicious activities that could be evidence of money laundering. The company agreed to pay a fine of $ 4.3 billion in its wine plea.
In the first days of administration, Trump officials signaled their displeasure by cases where the prosecutor who founded the Eun Young Choi cryptocurrency team effectively degraded.
This team was created in 2022 to help prosecutors penetrate the often murky world of cryptocurrency, because multinational criminals have begun to use digital money more and more to facilitate crimes.
Matthew Goldstein contributed from New York.
