White House Publishes ‘Roadmap’ to Mitigate Cryptocurrency Risks

The White House has released a “Roadmap for Reducing Cryptocurrency Risk.” The roadmap calls for authorities to “step up enforcement where appropriate” and for Congress to “step up efforts” to regulate the crypto sector. It also noted that major financial institutions should not legislate to “dive headfirst into the cryptocurrency market.”

Administration’s Roadmap for Reducing Cryptocurrency Risks”

The White House, under the National Economic Council (NEC), the Executive Office of the President (EOP) established to advise the President on U.S. and global economic policy, on Friday released “The Administration’s Roadmap to Mitigate Cryptocurrencies’ Risks” blog post.

The roadmap was developed by four White House advisors: NEC Director Brian Deese, Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Director Arati Prabhakar, Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) Chair Cecilia Rouse, National Security Advisor CEA provides objective economic advice on the formulation of domestic and foreign economic policy, while OSTP is charged with advising the President on all matters related to science and technology.

More on White House advisors.

At President Biden’s direction, we have spent the past year identifying cryptocurrency risks and acting to mitigate those risks using the authority the executive branch has.

“Experts across the Executive Branch have put forth a first-of-its-kind framework for developing digital assets in a secure and responsible manner while addressing the risks they pose,” they added.

The framework identifies a number of risks, including crypto-entities ignoring applicable financial regulations and basic risk controls, misleading consumers, having conflicts of interest, providing improper disclosures, and outright fraud. In addition, the authors claim that there is “poor cybersecurity throughout the industry” that has allowed North Korea to “steal more than $1 billion to fund its offensive missile program.”

While encouraging regulators to continue to “exercise their authority to strengthen enforcement where appropriate and issue new guidance where necessary,” the roadmap authors stress that.

The events of the past year underscore that more needs to be done. Agencies are redoubling their efforts to combat fraud… Enforcement agencies are devoting more resources to fighting fraud involving digital assets…

“In the coming months, the administration will also announce priorities for research and development of digital assets where cryptocurrency-driven technology can help protect consumers by default,” they revealed.

Congress needs to “step up efforts” to regulate crypto

The roadmap also calls on Congress to “step up its efforts .