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Benjamin W. Hutten quoted in American Banker article, "Will AML rules be extended to crypto?”

American Banker

In the American Banker article, “Will AML rules be extended to crypto?” Ben Hutten noted that "Congress has viewed cryptocurrency as a gap in the protection of the U.S. financial system from illicit funds. The nature of illicit finance is that when one area becomes more heavily regulated, illicit financiers will look to the next. It's always going to be a little bit of a game of cat and mouse.”

He also added that FinCEN's AML bank enforcement is inconsistent compared to the agency's MSB regulation. “Essentially, you could have two crypto firms doing the same type of business and one could be regulated by FinCEN as a money-service business and the other could be regulated as a bank, with different schemes of AML regulation, simply by virtue of where and how they chose to form and how they chose to be regulated. I think FinCEN has some work to do to cohesively regulate the crypto business instead of shoehorning them into regulations designed for either money transmitters or banks.”

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