Does China have too much sway over digital currency?
That, apparently, is a concern of the outgoing Trump Administration’s spy chief, with Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe warning, in a letter obtained by the Washington Examiner, of Beijing’s rising affect and energy within the cryptocurrency sector.
Within the letter, addressed to Securities and Alternate Fee (SEC) Chairman Jay Clayton, Ratcliffe mentioned China is now house to over half of the world’s cryptocurrency mining operations and that Beijing is weighing plans for an official digital forex that would field out U.S.-based innovators and entrepreneurs, in keeping with the newspaper.
And Ratcliffe has discovered an influential congressional ally, having connected a duplicate of a letter by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) that expresses related considerations.
Cotton has beforehand pushed the SEC to step up its involvement in overseeing the cryptocurrency sector with an eye fixed towards making a extra degree, or extra favorable, enjoying discipline for U.S. rivals.
The SEC must “develop a clearer articulation of coverage and, finally, formal Fee steerage addressing digital currencies” Cotton famous in a 2018 letter, the Washington Examiner mentioned.
Cotton escalated his warning in one other, follow-up letter in July, to nationwide safety adviser Robert O’Brien, with a very barbed warning about “Chinese language-controlled Bitcoin and Ether.”
“To this point the Fee has concluded that solely two digital belongings ought to be thought-about non-securities — Chinese language-controlled Bitcoin and Ether,” Cotton wrote, in keeping with the Washington Examiner.
“The continued lack of regulatory readability not solely hurts U.S.-developed digital belongings, it places American nationwide and financial safety gravely in danger,” Cotton wrote.
The letter by the U.S. spy chief — and Cotton’s missives — come on the heels of an govt order President Trump issued earlier this month barring transactions between people and corporations within the U.S. with a number of corporations tied to the China’s Individuals’s Liberation Military.
There’s a risk the Trump Administration may attempt to prolong or interpret the order as overlaying “Chinese language-linked digital forex corporations,” the Washington Examiner stories.
