Biden Treasury Pick Calls Crypto a "Particular Concern"

Janet Yellen, the expected Treasury Department lead for the Biden Administration, said that cryptocurrencies are “mainly for illicit financing” and described them as a “particular concern.”

In response to a question about the use of cryptocurrencies by criminals and terrorists, Yellen said, “I think many [cryptocurrencies] are used, at least in a transaction sense, mainly for illicit financing and I think we need to examine ways in which we can curtail their use and make sure that anti-money laundering doesn’t occur through those channels.”

During the same Senate Finance Committee hearing, Yellen said that the United States government should continue to monitor cryptocurrencies (and other forms of payment) as funding methods used by terrorists:

“The technologies to accomplish this change over time and we need to make sure that our methods for dealing with these matters, with tech terrorist financing, change along with changing technology, cryptocurrencies are a particular concern.”