Search ForexCrunch

US Secretary of State, Michael Pompeo has said that cryptocurrencies should be regulated like all other forms of payment in the last 24 hours.  

In an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, he said “We should use the same framework that we use to regulate all other electronic financial transactions. That’s essentially what these are. These are monies moving through markets, or in some case disintermediated transactions”  

When asked about Libra and other cryptocurrencies the US Secretary of State looked sheepish. The main issue he seemed to have with cryptos is the decentralised nature of the transactions. He did conceded it may take some time to fix this adding if it continued “It would decrease the security for the world if that’s the direction we travel.”.  

One of the main comments noted was “We need to preserve a financial system – a global financial system – that protects that.” as it seems clear that losing control is not an option.  

“The risk with anonymous transactions is one that we all know well. We know this from 9/11 and terror activity that took place in the 15 years preceding that, where we didn’t have good tracking; we didn’t have the capacity to understand money flows and who was moving money,”  

Fear-mongering seems to be the way forward for the US Secretary of State.