Anja Manuel, a former State Department official, said that if the United States could not maintain its dominance in financial innovation and payments, it could affect its national security policy, especially with regard to sanctions.
In an April 21 Twitter Spaces discussion, Manuel told Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and the audience that since the US is one of the world's largest payments leaders, it allows the government to target “bad actors” like Iran or North Korea. impose sanctions. Letting the state lead innovation under clear rules strengthens US national security controls, but China appears to be catching up to mobile payments dominance "in sophistication and scale," according to Manuel. “While we haw and haw here and there is no thoughtful regulatory framework in the US, China is moving forward, and so are many others,” Manuel said. “For example, if Chinese payment solutions become dominant in developing countries, [sanctions] will become more severe.”
The US imposes sanctions through the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which has announced several actions against Russian nationals and groups involved in the Ukraine war including sanctions on crypto wallets. traditional banks" and "responsible" blockchain companies, but not when there are financial technology companies that can be used by individuals looking to circumvent the restrictions up.
Manuel added: “Other thoughtful nations are coming together, from Singapore to the UK to the EU. It's not impossible it just hasn't happened in the US, where regulation comes almost entirely from SEC enforcement actions.” The Twitter Spaces discussion is part of Coinbase's "Crypto435" campaign to promote pro-crypto policies and candidates in the United States. After the exchange received Wells' notice in March, Armstrong reiterated his call to pro-cryptocurrency US voters to take action a sign that the SEC may take enforcement action.
“Countries are not going to wait for the US to figure this out,” Tomicah Tillemann, a former senior advisor to two US secretaries of state, said of regulation. “Currently, 114 different governments are at a fairly advanced stage of investigating their central bank digital currencies. More than half of them are very far along in the process.” Armstrong, who has been one of the more outspoken critics of the leaders of major US digital asset exchanges, said the SEC needs to provide “clear rules to regulate the cryptocurrency industry.” In the looming Wells notice, the Coinbase CEO said he met with SEC officials and US lawmakers this week to push for regulatory clarity.
