© Reuters.
By Laura Sanchez
Investing.com – US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has spoken out about the potential risks and rewards of the booming “cryptoeconomy.”
She did so yesterday at a talk at American University’s Kogod School of Business Innovation Center, where she stressed that financial regulators need to take seriously the risks posed by digital assets to consumers and the economy. at large.
“Digital assets may be new, but many of the problems they pose are not. We have enjoyed the benefits of innovation in the past, and we have also faced some of its unintended consequences” , Ms. Yellen said, in remarks reported by MarketWatch.
Ms Yellen argued that the government’s role is to ‘support’ and ‘ensure responsible innovation’ by adjusting rules to account for new technologies, but that companies providing similar services should be regulated in the same way, regardless of the technologies behind these services.
“Consumers, investors and businesses should be protected against fraud and misrepresentation, whether assets are stored on a balance sheet or in a distributed ledger,” Ms Yellen said. “And taxpayers should receive the same type of tax reporting on digital asset transactions as they do on stock and bond transactions, so they have the information they need to report their income to the IRS,” said she added.
The speech comes nearly a month after US President Joe Biden signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to conduct a thorough review of their policies relating to cryptocurrencies and other digital assets, and as the US Securities and Exchange Commission strives to register major cryptocurrency exchanges.
SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said on Monday that he views exchange registration as a necessary first step in encouraging cryptocurrency issuers to register as issuers of securities and submit to a monitoring and disclosure regime similar to that faced by public issuers of stocks and bonds.