Feds accelerating crypto world crackdown

A recent job posting on the Justice Department’s website is yet another indication that the federal government is about to accelerate its oversight of criminal activity in the crypto world, FOX Business has learned.

The posting says the DOJ is looking to hire a trial attorney with expertise in both cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies as well as money laundering and asset forfeiture law to work within the department’s Criminal Division. The position will specifically be assigned to a unit focusing on crypto-related crimes. Responsibilities include prosecuting criminals who use digital currencies as vehicles for illegal activity and providing advice to federal agents on legislative and regulatory matters.

The posting, though unremarkable on the surface, is further proof that the federal government is worried about the proliferation of crimes involving digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, and plans a broad criminal crackdown on illicit activities in the crypto world. In recent weeks, crypto-related criminal activity has been making national headlines, particularly with the cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline in May that resulted in the days-long shutdown of the country’s largest fuel pipeline. Russian hackers were behind the move and they demanded $5 billion in ransom money, which was paid by Colonial’s CEO in bitcoin.

The FBI ultimately recovered around half of the money by seizing a so-called digital wallet that contained the ransom. Last year, the DOJ seized $1 million in crypto assets from the now-defunct Silk Road marketplace, one of the most notorious criminal digital-currency black markets in existence.

Aside from criminal activities, both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Treasury Department are monitoring the hype surrounding Bitcoin and other digital currencies and whether small investors are being misled to buy cryptocurrencies, which have no immediate inherent value. Digital currencies are used when transacting business through blockchain technologies, but the industry is nascent and has yet to gain broad acceptance as a tool to transact business.

"There's absolutely nothing you can do with Bitcoin - it doesn't have a characteristic of a commodity, it doesn't have the characteristics of an asset, so it’s just a token, a speculative token," says crypto skeptic Peter Schiff, chief economist and global strategist at Europac. "Right now people want to collect it because they don't really understand it".

Beanie Babies!

When did the feds ever regulate those?

Tulips are more like it ...

Just an example of how people assign value to nothing.

Fed oversight is likely to increase dramatically.

You of course have the stuff mentioned, ransom attacks demanding payment in crypto and crypto enabling online black markets.

You also have tax issues. The dollar is the only legal tender in the United States; everything else is an asset/property. With crypto: if you mine crypto, you immediately owe taxes on whatever you mine. If you buy crypto for $10, then use it when it's worth $15, then you owe taxes on the realized value of it. If you run a business and accept crypto, then your accounting also has to include the fair market value of the crypto at the time of the transaction (and of course calculate any applicable sales tax). That's money the feds will come after at some point (especially from small time investors, since that's their favorite target for enforcement).

Meanwhile, Elon Musk will keep influencing the prices of multiple cryptos to avoid said taxes while carelessly fucking over every small time investor on Earth ...

Yeah, sounds about right ....