'The threat right now is not Yellen': Kristin Smith on crypto rumors and DC policy

It was a tweet heard 'round the crypto world. 

A breaking news account fired off, in all caps, an unsubstantiated headline that the U.S. Treasury Department was set to crack down on a number of unknown banks for their activity in the crypto market. Soon after the tweet's release, several industry insiders — including the Blockchain Association's Kristin Smith — threw cold water on its key claim. 

"There's a lot of rumors going around that don't have any truth of foundation," Smith said. 

In this episode of The Scoop, Smith unpacked the erroneous rumor, why U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen isn't making bitcoin a priority right now, how crypto policy works, and why crypto market participants should be concerned about the Financial Action Task Force decision coming this June.

As Smith put it during the interview:

"The thing that we do have to worry about at Treasury isn't coming from the top people as I said but Treasury's interaction with the Financial Action Task Force or the FATF. The FATF has proposed something that is fairly scary ... if adopted would require a lot of different entities in the U.S. to register as money services businesses."

Smith went on to add: "The threat right now is not Yellen."

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