In a hearing titled “Examining Regulatory Frameworks for Digital Currencies and Blockchain,” the United States Senate Banking Committee heard from industry participants and analysts, with a common refrain that potential and risk are in the offing, and new regulations are needed.
The Tuesday, July 30, hearing, of course, comes in the wake of an examination earlier this month by the Senate Banking Committee of Libra, the proposed digital currency in the works from Facebook and a host of other companies through a consortium model.
In remarks Tuesday, Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio said that efforts such as those from Facebook on Libra, are risky. Facebook, he said, has proved that it “cannot be trusted. They break things like … political discourse … relationships and privacy. Now they want to break our currencies and payment systems, while hiding behind the phrase ‘innovation.’”
Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and CEO of payments company Circle, testifying on behalf of the CENTRE Consortium, said that the current banking system is vulnerable to money laundering, where according to his testimony as much as 99% of money laundering is undetected.
The problem is significant, he noted, where per stats from the UN Office of Drugs and Crime, the amount laundered through the global financial systems exceeds US$2 trillion, with US$300 billion laundered in the United States.
“Only detecting 1 percent of financial crimes is not enough,” he told the panel.
He said that access to
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