Bitcoin has been growing in popularity for years now, and while it is still a fiat currency (meaning it could drop to zero as it is created out of nothing), it has shown itself to be a viable alternative monetary form to the current state of the dollar, which is in its natural death and has been for years but has been kept alive artificially through unnatural monetary policies that have enriched a minority at the expense of the many. How according to Business Insider, Biden’s new (old) Treasury Secretary nominee Janet Yellen want to see cryptocurrency restricted because it is used to purchase illegal goods many times online.
Janet Yellen, President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for treasury secretary, suggested on Tuesday that lawmakers “curtail” the use of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin over concerns that they are “mainly” used for illegal activities.
There has been a surge in interest in bitcoin; its price has soared by about 300% in the past year. Bitcoin was down 7.59%, to $34,183.57, on Wednesday, while Ethereum was down 9.74%, to $1,259.97, after hitting an all-time high of more than $1,430 on Tuesday.
Yellen’s comments suggested the incoming Biden administration could be hostile to cryptocurrencies and ramp up regulation. Watchdogs around the world, from the European Central Bank to the UK’s financial regulator, have recently expressed concerns about cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
Sen. Maggie Hassan asked Yellen during her confirmation hearing on Tuesday about the dangers of terrorists using cryptocurrencies.
“You’re absolutely right that the technologies to accomplish this change over time, and we need to make sure that our methods for dealing with these matters, with terrorist financing, change along with changing technology,” Yellen said.
“Cryptocurrencies are a particular concern. I think many are used – at least in a transaction sense – mainly for illicit financing.
“And I think we really need to examine ways in which we can curtail their use and make sure that money laundering doesn’t occur through those channels.”
Yellen’s comments echoed those of ECB President Christine Lagarde, who said last week that Bitcoin had been used for some “totally reprehensible money-laundering activity.”
Major investors have expressed similar worries. Warren Buffet said last year that “Bitcoin has been used to move around a fair amount of money illegally.” He said investors should “go short suitcases,” as criminals would no longer need them to carry cash. (source)
The trends are clear. Cryptocurrency is not going anywhere. Yellen knows this, and if the US were to stop, it is not going to stop the rest of the world, which is already moving in its own direct as the American Empire declines.
Likewise, it is fair to point out that there are four illegal commodities that Bitcoin or other forms of cryptocurrency is often used for buying online:
-Narcotics
-Scams (i.e. taking the money with nothing in return)
-Child abuse material
-Weapons
With the exception of the second item (scams), all of these other areas are so dominated by the government in the form of website “honeypots” or other governments in the world that one is probably safer playing a game of “Russian roulette” with four of the six chambers loaded. It is incredibly risky to buy any of these illegal products, and this is the main reason why people get caught from what I have seen reading stories about people being arrested for the above crimes, because they will
Unless you are involved in one of those four things above, which transactions for them are mostly carried out on the dark web, then not only are you pretty much safe, but the crime rate drops to practically nothing save for the natural theft and funny money business found between people wherever there is money involved (general corruption, etc.).
Cryptocurrency is not some sort of super solution that some people make it. But it is a trend, it is a legitimate means of exchange, it is an accepted form of storing and communicating value, it is fungible, and it has demand. It is not perfect, but such cannot be expected with any currency. The fact is, it meet the standards for what a currency should be and it works well, and that is a good thing.
What I suspect, based on experience, is that Yellen is preparing for the Federal government to do what it often does, which is after it is the largest criminal participant in a mostly deregulated field (and often so in order to gain funds to pay for other illegal activities in other nations, such as the selling of weapons to Iran in order to fund the right-wing death squads in Nicaragua known as the Contras), it will realize that it wants to tax and integrate said system, but in order to cover for her crimes and prevent competition by other people doing the same, she will “find illegal activity” and after moralistically denouncing it thoroughly and calling for it to be banned, will find a “balance” by keeping it but with a lot of restrictions, and all to her favor.
The trend of cryptocurrency is not going away. This is just the same classic American-style manipulation of the public by the government, and the average citizen, in spite of the same “game play” being run on him many, many times over, like Charlie Brown having the football pulled out from under him by Lucy, is about to be bamboozled into the same deceptions as before, and then wonder and complain about the government when they were the problem all along.
This is not to say that cryptocurrencies cannot or are not used for illegal activity. However, when one looks at illegal actions, one needs to first look to the very government whose moralizing platitudes versus her grossly immoral activities are beyond a joke at this point, for if the government bureaucrats were treated the same way that citizens are dealt with for their actions (for example, the arrest of a common man selling guns illegally versus the US trafficking of thousands of weapons into Syria to be given to ISIS by way of Operation Timber Sycamore in 2014), she would have been jailed permanently for over a century now.
It’s not about “safety”, “patriotism”, or “children”, but power, and anything else is just a distraction made to justify the further expansion of power, because the trends don’t lie, but politicians and bureaucrats frequently do.