President Joe Biden plans to regulate the blockchain and digital currency industry over the next few years. The 2023 United States budget contains several provisions that address “digital assets” and “cryptocurrency”.

The White House refers to these plans as its strategy to “modernize the rules for digital assets,” and they expect their efforts to bring in $4.9 billion in revenue by 2023.

The provisions mainly relate to the information reporting requirement, reporting of foreign digital asset accounts, and changing mark-to-market rules to include digital assets.

By 2032, the White House expects this strategy to reduce the budget deficit by $10.95 billion.

In addition to generating revenue from modernizing digital asset rules, the White House announced it would spend $52 million on “countering cyber threats” by hiring more officers, improving response and building intelligence gathering and analysis capabilities.

“These investments are consistent with the administration’s anti-ransomware strategy which emphasizes disruptive activity and combating the misuse of cryptocurrency,” says the full report.

Digital Currency Executive Order

The plan to modernize the rules for digital assets is consistent with President Joe Biden’s executive order on digital assets and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler’s hawkish rhetoric on the digital asset industry.

Both Executive Order and Gary Gensler have called for more regulatory scrutiny of the digital asset space. Executive Order said protecting consumers and investors, mitigating illicit finance and national security risks posed by the illicit use of digital assets, and more, are top priorities for the United States; while Gary Gensler has repeatedly called the digital asset industry highly speculative and digital currencies poker chips.

When the order was released and Gensler made his statements, the threatened legislation appeared to be far in the future. The order and Gary Gensler have both said legislation is coming; however, they never put a date on it.

The 2023 fiscal budget shows us that the legislation the two were talking about is imminent, and that the Biden administration has created detailed plans around the approach it will take to regulate the digital asset space over the next few years.

The wild west digital currency

The days when the digital asset industry was the “Wild West” are coming to an end. The President of the United States, the Chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, the Secretary of the Treasury, and many other government officials are getting closer to digital currencies. While these people ultimately support innovation around the nascent digital asset industry and want to create an environment that encourages that innovation to stay in the United States, they know they need to develop legal frameworks that thwart the bad actors, illicit projects and blatant scams. in the industry before this goal is achieved.

Watch: Pēteris Zilgalvis, Head of Unit, Digital Innovation and Blockchain at DG Connect, European Commission, on Bitcoin Association Blockchain Policy Issues

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