The headquarters of the Ministry of Justice in Washington, DC on April 18, 2022.
Kent Nishimura | Los Angeles Times | Getty images
The United States Ministry of Justice has suddenly closed its national team of application of cryptocurrencies, signaling a major change in the way the federal government will manage crimes related to the crypto in the future, according to a memo sent Monday evening by the Vice-Procureur General Todd Blanche.
In this document, Blanche describes a decentralized approach in which the offices of the American lawyer will now take the lead on digital assets, mainly focusing on crimes involving terrorism.
In the future, the document has declared that efforts would now focus on “the pursuit of people who victimize digital asset investors, or those who use digital assets to continue criminal offenses such as terrorism, narcotics and trafficking in human beings, organized crime, hacking and financing of cards and gangs.”
The dissolution of the unit is the last of a series of regulatory radiation under President Donald Trump, who made friendly crypto policies a centerpiece of his campaign in 2024.
Created in 2022 under the former president Joe Biden, the national team for applying cryptocurrency was responsible for attacking the illicit use of cryptocurrencies.
The unit played a central role in high-level cases, including the investigation into Binance and its founder, Changpeng Zhao, who pleaded guilty in 2023 for violating American anti-balance laws, which resulted in a regulation of $ 4.3 billion.
Prosecutors were invited to close the current surveys who do not line up on new priorities, according to the memo.
The DoJ also explicitly declares that it will not continue the application against crypto exchanges, mixing and tumbling services, or offline portfolios for their users’ actions or “involuntary violations of regulations” – marking a major gap in relation to previous policy. Prosecutors are invited not to invoice violations of financial laws, such as the transmission of money without license and the values of securities not registered unless they can prove that the defendant knew the rules and has voluntarily infringed.
This change in policy aligns with Trump’s executive decree pleading for open access to blockchain networks and reflects the broader support of its administration for the relaxation of regulations in the digital asset industry, in which it has personal participation.
Trump and his family have expressed themselves in several crypto projects in the past year. One is a decentralized digital bank and still lucky called World Liberty Financial, which has already sold $ 550 million in tokens. This company sends 75% of the benefits to entities related to Trump. The family also earns money with the pieces even of Trump and Melania.
As part of the latest actions, the major market integrity unit will cease all the efforts to apply cryptocurrency.
The section of computer crime and intellectual property of the criminal division will continue to play a support role by providing advice and training to staff from the Ministry of Justice and acting as a connection with the digital asset industry.
The memo criticized previous efforts to use the application of the criminal as a de facto regulatory tool for the cryptocurrency industry within the framework of the Biden administration. The Ministry of Justice will reduce its objective to pursue people who use digital assets to commit or facilitate serious crimes.
The Ministry of Justice has pointed out that it will continue to investigate and pursue digital crimes linked to assets when they involve investors’ fraud or are used to support terrorism, trafficking in human beings, cartel operations and cybercrime.
“Litigation or application measures that have the effect of superimposing regulatory executives on digital assets” will no longer be prosecuted, according to the memo, postpone this responsibility towards financial regulators operating outside the criminal justice system.
The Ministry of Justice did not immediately respond to the request for CNBC comments.
Since its entry into office, the Trump administration has quickly reduced surveillance, the Securities and Exchange committee taking a break or the abandonment of several large -scale application measures, and revoking a banking rule that prevented Wall Street banks from adopting Crypto.
Despite the change in deregulation, the digital asset market plunged last month alongside actions. Bitcoin is negotiated at around $ 78,000, down compared to its top of all time almost $ 110,000, and the larger cryptography market has erased more than $ 1.2 billion from its market capitalization since December.
