US DoJ promises action against crypto platforms partaking in illegal behavior

• The DoJ is taking action against crypto exchanges that allow crimes such as money laundering.
• Taking action would convey a deterrent message to organizations that don’t adhere to anti-money laundering or customer identification rules.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) is taking action against crypto exchanges along with the “mixers and tumblers” that conceal the trail of transactions.

According to a recent Financial Times report, the leading cryptocurrency enforcement agency in the country has announced a crackdown on illegal behavior on digital platforms, claiming that the extent of crypto crime has expanded dramatically in the last four years.

The DoJ is targeting crypto exchanges as well as “mixers and tumblers” that conceal the trail of transactions, according to Eun Young, director of the agency’s national cryptocurrency enforcement team (NCET). The Department is also targeting businesses that commit or allow crimes such as money laundering to occur.

Choi said:

“They’re allowing for all the other criminal actors to easily profit from their crimes and cash out in ways that are obviously problematic to us,”

She added that the emphasis on platforms would convey a deterrent message to organizations that are not investing in robust compliance and risk mitigation procedures and are not adhering to anti-money laundering or customer identification rules.

Choi continued:

“We’re seeing the scale and the scope of digital assets being used in a variety of illicit ways grow significantly over the last, say, four years… I think that is concurrent with the increase of its adoption by the public writ large.”

The DoJ is reportedly also focusing on thefts and hacks involving decentralized finance (DeFi), notably “chain bridges” where users can trade multiple types of digital tokens or embryonic enterprises with susceptible code.

Under the Biden Administration, the crypto enforcement unit under the DoJ has emerged as one of the government agencies with the harshest position on crypto in the world.

There are fears in the industry that a tougher assault on companies with systemic importance, such as Binance [BNB], could further destabilize the industry. However, Choi confirmed that if a corporation has gained a considerable market share in part by breaking US criminal law, the Department cannot take action against them.