The US President Joe Biden has frozen all regulatory processes including proposed FinCEN rules for cryptocurrency wallets. This was revealed by Jake Chervinsky, who happens to be a prominent cryptocurrency lawyer. His tweet read,
“President Biden has frozen all agency rulemaking pending further review. This includes former Secretary Mnuchin’s proposal on ‘unhosted wallets’. We fought hard & earned the right to take a breath & reset. Janet Yellen isn’t Steve Mnuchin. I’m optimistic.”
The official announcement was made in a White House memorandum on the 20th of January the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network [FinCEN] including various other heads of executive department and agencies. While the order did not specify the crypto wallet proposal, but places a general freeze after considering postponing the rules’ effective dates for 60 days from the date of this memorandum.
FinCEN firtst sumitted the self-hosted wallet proposal on the 18th of December 2020 under former US Treasury Secretary Mnuchin. The proposed rule in question was severely criticized and was also touted as detrimental to the crypto community by several prominent firgures including Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
FinCEN’s proposal essentially requires exchanges to collect personal information, including names and home addresses, from users seeking to transfer cryptocurrencies into their own wallets.
FinCEN Faced Severe Backlash from Community
Many proponents of the crypto industry deemed this proposal as poorly defined and a “shocking invasion of privacy”. Cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase had also called out FinCEN’s expedited timeline and urged for an extension of the comment period. Following widespread protest from crypto groups and firms, FinCEN extended the comment period earlier this month.
While the latest news brought a sense of relief among several industry players, the comments from Biden’s nominee for treasury secretary Janet Yellen about curtailing the use of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies did not sit well.
However, Chervinsky was not concerned about the Yellen’s take on cryptocurrencies as he stated,
“First, anyone is better than Secretary Mnuchin, who decided long ago that he hated everything about crypto. Second, although Dr. Yellen may not be a fan now, I expect she’ll be open to learning & listening, & will follow regular order in deciding on new regulations. That’s good.”