The Trump administration is withdrawing its application from cryptographic regulations, dissolving a unit dedicated to cryptocurrency application
The Department of Justice instructed federal prosecutors that “virtual currency exchanges, mixing and falling services, and wallets offline for the acts of their end users or involuntary violations of the regulations,” according to a memorandum of the United States attorney general reviewed by ABC News.
“The Department of Justice is not a digital asset regulator,” said the memorandum. “The National cryptocurrency Control Team (NCET) will dissolve immediately.”
The change is consistent with the other pro-Crypto policies of President Donald Trump, including the directives for the stock exchange and securities and the Future Trade Commission of the basic products to relieve cryptographic regulation and the creation of a digital asset reserve.
The memorandum of the attached attorney general Todd Blanche attacked the Biden administration, which he said, “used the Department of Justice to follow an reckless strategy of regulation by prosecution, which was badly conceived and poorly executed.”
Blanche said that the prosecutions and investigations of the Trump administration that involve the cryptographic industry would focus on “individuals who victimize digital asset investors, or those who use digital assets to promote criminal crimes such as terrorism, narcotics and trafficking in persons, organized crimes, piracy and financing of cartel and gangs.”
The Republican presidential candidate and former president of the United States, Donald Trump, makes gestures at the 2024 Bitcoin event in Nashville, Tennessee, on July 27, 2024.
Kevin Wurm/Reuters, file
The memorandum suggests that the Department of Justice would no longer be interested in some of the largest cryptographic cases presented under the previous administration, including cash tornado, which allegedly washing More than $ 1 billion and the hacker Avraham Eisenberg, which was convicted In April 2024 of a market manipulation case of $ 110 million. Both prosecutions were presented by the United States Prosecutor’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
Blanche also seemed to criticize how the office approached the prosecution of Sam Bankman-Fried, who the previous administration said he orchestrated “one of the greatest financial fraud in the history of the United States.”
Blanche said some investor victims have only been able to recover the value of their digital assets at the time the fraud was perpetrated.
“The effect: the losses of digital asset investors can be calculated at a value when the digital asset market was at a lower point, and the victims who supported the risk of loss cannot benefit from the corresponding profits that occurred during or after the period in which they were victims and otherwise they would have possessed the asset,” said the memorandum, adopting an argument of an argument made by the banks made by the banks that have been made by the banks that have been made by the banks. Blanche instructed prosecutors to change their approach.
A spokesman for the United States Prosecutor’s Office in Manhattan declined to comment.
