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Homepage > News > Business > a16z says ‘crypto’ money laundering is evil foreigners’ fault ‘Crypto’ money laundering crackdowns should focus on those dastardly foreigners, not noble and upstanding American operators, says American venture capital group Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). On October 14, Michele Korver and Jai Ramaswamy, respectively, the chief regulatory and legal officers at the tech-focused a16z, posted a blog detailing “concrete steps to address money laundering” involving digital assets. The authors start with the obvious, saying “combating money laundering is really hard” due to it mimicking legitimate activity. But they argue that “money laundering is never the cause of criminal activity,” therefore, it’s “not a crypto-specific problem.” The authors point out that money laundering existed before ‘crypto’ and, should crypto ever disappear, its absence “will merely drive the few criminals who use crypto to other tools to move or conceal their ill-gotten gains.” The authors apparently see no connection between crypto’s rise and the subsequent explosion in the volume of ransomware attacks and ‘pig butchering’ scams. Those ‘few’ criminals are mighty busy. The authors suggest a three-point strategy that includes expanding federal agencies’ extraterritorial jurisdiction to target “overseas bad actors” who have any link to the U.S. financial system; “step up” the Treasury Department’s enforcement capabilities to target non-compliant exchanges, kiosks and other money transmitters; and encourage greater info-sharing between the public and private sectors. The authors claim their strategy is “tech neutral,” building on the authors’ claim that “it’s widely acknowledged that we don’t and shouldn’t prosecute coders for developing software.” In truth, it’s not clear how widely this belief is acknowledged, given that successful prosecutions have been conducted and are being conducted against the coders behind the Ethereum-based coin mixing service Tornado Cash, a favorite tool of North Korea’s ‘crypto’ hackers looking to launder their ill-gotten…

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Filed under: News - @ October 18, 2024 11:22 am