Turns out I completely misjudged Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin. Here I was thinking he was just another abject, swamp-dwelling creature who profited immensely by foreclosing on thousands of distressed homeowners during the last recession, when in fact the former 'Foreclosure King' is actually the indefatigable defender of the American middle class.
This realization dawned upon me as I was reading an article in the popular news website Zero Hedge, about Mr. Mnuchin's and the Financial Stability Oversight Council's efforts to "stop bad people from doing bad things" using Bitcoin.
According to the current Treasury Secretary, any company providing custodial services using their Bitcoin wallet, will have to comply with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations, or face the full brunt of the US government's prosecutorial might.
He went even further, understating the importance of close international cooperation in drafting a common legal framework to deal with these issues, stating that G-20 countries won't let Bitcoin "become a numbered Swiss account."
This term is a direct allusion to former US President Barrack Obama's flawed comparison of a Bitcoin wallet to a number Swiss account.
Never mind the fact that numbered Swiss accounts are actually a thing of the past, and that you'll be forced to produce a valid form of identification to open and operate a bank account in Switzerland.
Why would Jordan 'The Wolf of Wall Street' Belfort use his wife's aunt Patricia as a rat hole in his international money laundering scheme if he could just open an anonymous account in Switzerland?
Why, because that option wasn't available to him! Nor to anyone else. Not back then, in the early 1990s, and most certainly not in 2018! That loophole has long been closed.
Using this type of language is a veiled attempt to conflate the notion of Bitcoin with illegal activities like tax evasion and money laundering.
Plus, it's not like these regulations ever stopped organized crime from moving around proceeds from fraud, racketeering, and drug trafficking.
In fact, HSBC was found to be laundering billions of dollars for Mexican drug cartels. Not just that, but Bernard L. Maddoff, who ran the largest ponzi scheme in recorded history, used one or several accounts at JP Morgan Chase as his slush fund.
These are just two examples off the top of my head, and I'm sure a simple Google search can provide a list of dozen other examples of the brazen flaunting of AML/KYC regulations by white collar criminals, drug lords, and human traffickers.
So, while it warms my heart to know, Mr. Secretary, that you're watching out for our best interests, your amazing talents and generosity are wasted on us.
Go put those to better use. Go play the ukelele with the squirrels in the forest or something, and leave us the heck alone!
