Biden Administration Reportedly Plans to Regulate Bitcoin, Alt Coins, and NFT

Apparently, the years of free flowing digital assets are coming to an end in the US as governments around the world are becoming increasingly concerned with the new decentralised, unregulated, and volatile market.

President Joe Biden and his administration are planning to take executive action in order to start regulating cryptocurrencies and other digital assets in the US, Forbes has reported. According to the magazine, the regulation will not just affect popular currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, but also altcoins, stablecoins, and non-fungible tokens (NFT).

The move is seen as prompted by national security needs, Forbes said. An army of US regulators, which include the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are expected to coordinate efforts to start regulating the market, which has so far operated with next to no restrictions or control. Washington will also reportedly coordinate these efforts with foreign governments.

At present, cryptocurrencies are not even classified as securities in the US and there is practically no oversight over cryptocurrency exchanges. There are no checks for unethical behaviour, Ponzi schemes, money laundering, shady practices, and monitoring of pump-and-dump schemes on the markets (when a large position is opened and then, after the market moves as a result of money "pumping", gets rapidly "dumped").

Forbes' contributor Jack Kelly suggests that the move might be used by the Biden administration to cover up the debt created by the passing of its multitrillion-dollar infrastructure bill and more expensive legislation still stuck in Congress. The introduction of cryptomarket regulation is bound to create additional income for the country through better taxation, new fines, and levies, Kelly believes. This revenue may be significant considering how much money moves through this market.

According to Forbes, the IRS is already reviewing the rules to recognise an entity as a crypto broker under the infrastructure bill adopted last summer. That would enable the service to collect taxes from them in full.

The United States is not the only country working on regulating the cryptocurrency market on its territory. Last year, China banned all operations with digital assets on its territory, including mining. Russia, for its part, is still considering options for regulating the market. While citizens and businesses are currently prohibited from using digital coins to pay for goods and services, private citizens can still buy and sell them, as well as keep mining them. Earlier in January, the Russian Central Bank proposed banning cryptocurrencies in the country, however, its proposal met with opposition from the Finance Ministry. The latter suggests strictly regulating them instead. The government and the Russian Parliament are yet to make up their mind on the issue.