Innovate some compliance mechanisms, US Treasury official tells DeFi community
The United States Treasury did a risk assessment of decentralized finance (DeFi) and found the sector lacking in several ways, Assistant Treasury Secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crime Elizabeth Rosenberg reminded an audience at the Atlantic Council think tank on April 21. Get ready for more regulation, she said.
Rosenberg referred to a report released earlier this month by the Treasury that found scammers, money launderers and North Korean hackers benefitting from the lack of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) compliance in the sector. That report was part of the Treasury’s response to U.S. President Joe Biden’s executive order on the responsible development of digital assets.
The report also found that DeFi was not always very decentralized. “There are generally persons and firms associated with those [DeFi] services to which AML/CFT obligations may already apply,” Rosenberg said. The assessment report established that all DeFi services are liable to compliance with the Bank Secrecy Act, including AML/CFT.
#US Treasury officials Liz Rosenberg and Brian Nelson will embark on a tour that includes stops in #Italy, #Switzerland, and #Germany, to try to coerce institutions into stopping trade with Russia. https://t.co/1jArWjghw8
“We will assess enhancements to our domestic AML/CFT regulatory regime as applied to DeFi services and monitor responsible innovation of AML/CFT and sanctions compliance tools,” Rosenberg said. She continued:
Rosenberg and her team were freshly back from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Virtual Assets Contact Group meeting in Tokyo, she said. The team presented the results of the Treasury’s DeFi risk assessment there as well.
Related: FATF
Read more on cointelegraph.com
