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The price of bitcoin hit a six-week high Monday (July 29). The alleged reason? Separate comments made over the weekend by presidential candidates Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at Nashville’s Bitcoin Conference that observers believe could signal, if not herald, greater legitimization of the cryptocurrency sector.
Kennedy, an independent candidate, called for launching a multi-million-dollar U.S. strategic reserve of bitcoin that matched the government’s current stake in gold.
Republican candidate Trump refrained from calling for a full-on strategic reserve, pledging instead to maintain the U.S. government’s current stash of bitcoin rather than selling it off, calling it a national “stockpile” of cryptocurrency.
The U.S. government, through various agencies, has increasingly seized significant amounts of cryptocurrencies in the course of financial crime enforcement. These assets are typically auctioned off, with proceeds going to the Treasury Forfeiture Fund or other government accounts. The current approach treats these digital assets as financial gains rather than strategic reserves.
The notion of potentially integrating digital assets into the U.S. government’s strategic reserves presents a disruptive approach that recognizes the evolving financial landscape and sees a role in it for cryptocurrencies. That’s something that proponents of the sector have been working toward, but skeptics remain wary in the face of crypto scams and other illicit activity in the sector.
Read more: Crypto’s Three Priorities for 2024: Interoperability, Acceptance, Regulation
Crypto and Global Financial Crime
According to a report by Chainalysis, $24.2 billion of illicit cryptocurrency was transferred in 2023, with over 60% of illegal crypto activity being tied to sanctioned groups or terrorist organizations.
Financial crime remains a challenge for financial institutions (FIs) worldwide, evolving in complexity and scale with each passing day. The U.S. government, through agencies such as the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Treasury Department, has increasingly encountered cryptocurrencies in its enforcement actions against financial crimes. These assets are often seized during investigations related to money laundering, drug trafficking, and other illegal activities. Traditionally, seized cryptocurrencies are auctioned off, with proceeds directed to government funds.
But as digital assets become more integral to the global financial system, the question arises: Should the U.S. government consider stockpiling cryptocurrencies as part of its strategic reserves?
Holding cryptocurrencies could provide the U.S. government with a flexible financial tool. Unlike traditional reserves, which are often physical commodities, cryptocurrencies are highly liquid digital assets. They can be quickly converted into fiat currencies or used directly in transactions that accept digital payments. This flexibility could be invaluable during financial crises or emergencies, providing the government with a readily accessible source of funds.
Establishing a cryptocurrency reserve would signal the U.S. government’s recognition of the growing importance of digital assets. This could encourage further development of blockchain technology and related innovations within the U.S.
But there is considerable public skepticism about the government’s involvement in holding digital currencies, given their association with illicit activities — and the ongoing rise in frequency of those illicit activities, particularly in the financial sector.
Read more: Blockchain’s Benefits for Regulated Industries
Countries around the world, including the U.S., have expressed concern that privately operated, highly volatile digital currencies could undermine government control of the financial and monetary systems, increase systemic risk, promote financial crime and hurt investors.
After all, on Thursday (July 25) cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase was fined $4.5 million by a U.K. regulator for serving “high-risk” customers. And this past April, U.S. Treasury Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo testified that cryptocurrency is increasingly becoming a safe haven for “malign actors” such as terror groups.
As a result, FIs have needed to step up their financial crime defenses. Seven in 10 FIs are now using AI and machine learning (ML) to fend off fraudsters, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence and Hawk collaboration, “Financial Institutions Revamping Technologies to Fight Financial Crimes.”
In an interview with PYMNTS, Wolfgang Berner, co-founder and CPO of Hawk, discussed the opportunities that large transaction models (LTMs) — generative artificial intelligence (AI) models adapted to financial crime — represent in establishing more robust, accurate and comprehensive detection and prevention mechanisms.
“The core idea is we treat transactions as sentences, teaching the transformer model the language and grammar of transactions, similar to how large language models like GPT-4 are trained on the text of the web,” Berner said. “And by doing that, it develops a very good understanding of the transactions, how transactions relate to each other, and what is genuine or possibly suspicious with them.”
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