New York Attorney General Calls on Crypto Industry to ‘Play by the Rules’
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On Monday, March 1, New York Attorney General Letitia James urged the cryptocurrency industry to “play by the rules.” Otherwise, the regulator “will shut you down.”
James based her message on the assumption that “too often, greedy industry players take unnecessary risks with investors’ money.” She reminded crypto industry players about the necessity of being registered with the Office of the Attorney General’s investor protection bureau.
The regulator will now take legal action against those who violate the law. “Today, we’re leveling the playing field and issuing alerts to both investors and industry members across the nation,” said James.
With the growing adoption of cryptocurrencies, concerns are increasing over the lack of crypto regulation. Over the past few months, a slew of regulators around the world have raised the crypto regulation issue, with some of them calling for the global regulation of bitcoin (BTC).
Thus, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde stated that bitcoin was a highly speculative asset, “which has conducted some funny business and some interesting and totally reprehensible money laundering activity.”
Lagarde is ostensibly pushing for global crypto regulation in an attempt to curb money laundering.
Meanwhile, Michel Gebert, the chairman of the European Blockchain Association, thinks that Europe is moving towards regulatory clarity for the crypto and blockchain sector. “It’s not regulation per se, it’s just an indication, at the moment,” he said.
In an interview with BeInCrypto last December, Gebert spoke about a regulatory project on asset-backed cryptocurrencies proposed by the finance ministers of Spain, Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands to the European Commission. Gebert said:
“First of all, the EU Commission is now taking the matter very seriously. And secondly, it has a common approach across all countries in the EU, which, as you might know, is kind of a struggle of itself. So it was very surprising to see how fast they agreed on a roadmap.”
Gebert added that the proposed regulations will bring more stability to investors, not only private or high income investors, but, also, institutional investors.
Michael Saylor, the CEO of MicroStrategy — who just bought another $15 million in BTC — believes that regulation can actually come in handy. According to Saylor, it can construct a methodology that allows for bitcoin to be stored and transacted in a safer way.
“To the extent that we have regulated entities that are dealing in bitcoin, I think it’s just going to accelerate the stampede of institutional money into bitcoin,” Saylor concluded.
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