New bill would hand Treasury blank check to ban crypto at exchanges

In brief, it would hand the Treasury Secretary unchecked discretion to forbid financial institutions from offering their customers access to cryptocurrency networks.

The first four allow the Secretary of the Treasury to direct financial institutions to engage in extraordinary surveillance and recordkeeping about their customer's transactions and the fifth allows the Secretary of the Treasury to direct financial institutions to prohibit their customers from transacting at all.

These measures can be put in place if the Secretary of the Treasury deems that.

If the Secretary of the Treasury deems that either the Netherlands, a Dutch crypto exchange, all cryptocurrency transactions validated by a miner outside of the US, or all non-custodial wallets are "Of primary money laundering concern," then she can swiftly make it illegal for any US financial institution from maintaining accounts for customers involving those "Concerns." The law already lacks robust due process, but at least in its current form it requires a public notice and an opportunity for public comment in advance of the measure taking effect, or within 120 days.

Aside from removing the already limited notice and comment safeguards, the law also ostensibly empowers the Treasury Department to impose these measures with regard to cryptocurrency transactions.

"Below, the current law is redlined to show how it would read if this new provision was to be passed into law. It shows specifically the procedural changes proposed to subsection. As is plain, the deletion of section removes a requirement that prohibitions (subsection(5 be imposed by regulation only, such that any special measure can be imposed"By order, regulation, or otherwise as permitted by law" (the new language at the top of(1.

In addition to gutting all administrative processes for the imposition of special measures, the America COMPETES Act would also add a new species of special measure: "Prohibitions or Conditions on Certain Transmittals of Funds." The Secretary already has the ability to prohibit financial institutions from maintaining accounts for customers under special measures five, but this sixth new type of "Special measure" goes much further.

https://www.coincenter.org/new-bill-would-hand-treasury-blank-check-to-ban-crypto-at-exchanges/