Tribune. An official report submitted on 1er November to US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen shows that the Biden administration is determined to regulate cryptocurrencies (” Report on stablecoins “, President’s Working Group on Financial Markets). Admittedly, the report proposes a series of recommendations intended more particularly for “stable cryptocurrencies”, stablecoins, leaving other cryptocurrencies and their exchange platforms outside the scope of its recommendations for the moment. But they are at the center of the ecosystem: stablecoins currently account for $ 130 billion in cumulative market capitalization and could quickly grow in importance.
Another factor is that the stable cryptocurrency promised by Facebook, the diem (formerly libra), is urgently demanding its marketing authorization … The report advocates the adoption by Congress of a new “Prudential framework” for the stablecoins federally, ending current regulatory loopholes. Stable cryptocurrency issuers will need to build confidence in their asset reserves (issuers of the stablecoin tether were recently sanctioned for cheating on the announced amount of their reserves), limiting their links with business entities as well as their use of user data.
The aim is to drive dishonest users out of this financial industry and to build the confidence of bona fide users and investors. Fixed to a fiduciary asset, most often the dollar, stablecoins are supposed not to run the risk of a sharp drop in their price. But, by regulating the use of stablecoins, the Biden administration could well put an end to the libertarian dream that was for some the launch of cryptocurrencies.
Instability, a danger
The goal of crypto-assets and other private digital currencies was indeed to enable secure transactions without the intervention of third-party agents, such as central banks, governments and their financial regulatory agencies. This decentralized, disintermediated and free alternative to the traditional financial system corresponds to the ideal monetary system imagined by the liberal economist Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992), in which the different currencies, managed only by individuals, are put back into competition every day on the markets.
In addition, cryptocurrencies offer their users an unprecedented degree of confidentiality. Where several information relating to the private life of people are essential for their registration in a bank file, only their IP address is really necessary for the exchange of virtual currencies.
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