Senate Grills Bitcoins – Live Webcast

"Beyond Silk Road: Potential Risks, Threats, and Promises of Virtual Currencies" is the title of today's Senate hearing (from Homeland Security) on th eperils of Bitcoin. We are sure the exaggeration and exasperation will run high as Government offers up its Financial Crimes (and missing and exploited children) directors, and the de-centralized unregulated crypto-currency faces them down…

Live Stream (via Senate)

Witnesses
Panel I

    Jennifer Shasky Calvery
    Director, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network
    U.S. Department of the Treasury
    Mythili Raman
    Acting Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division
    U.S. Department of Justice
    Edward W. Lowery III
    Special Agent in Charge, Criminal Investigative Division
    U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Panel II

    Ernie Allen
    President and Chief Executive Officer
    The International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children
    Patrick Murck
    General Counsel
    The Bitcoin Foundation, Inc.
    Jeremy Allaire
    Chief Executive Officer
    Circle Internet Financial, Inc.
    Jerry Brito
    Senior Research Fellow, The Mercatus Center
    George Mason University

The best "brief" summary of what is Bitcoin…

Here is coindesk.com's color on what to expect…

Given the title, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Silk Road features heavily in some testimony. In particular, Mythili Raman, acting assistant attorney general for the US Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, uses it in his prepared statement as an example of why regulation of decentralized currencies should be “sufficiently robust”.

Anonymity vs privacy

Silk Road, the online black marketplace taken down by FBI investigators in October, highlights “challenges investigators face when they encounter these systems, some of which may ultimately require additional legal or regulatory tools,” Raman said, singling out the difficulty of accessing customer records as one of the most significant challenges facing law enforcers dealing with virtual currencies.

Ernie Allen, president and CEO of the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, is also worried about anonymity in virtual currencies. In his testimony, he will voice his concerns over the use of virtual currencies including bitcoin for child pornography and sex trafficking payments.

“In our consultations with law enforcement worldwide, we have heard the argument that there is a difference between privacy and anonymity. Law enforcement leaders embrace the broadest possible privacy protections for individuals, but emphasize that absolute internet anonymity is a prescription for catastrophe,” he says. “Our challenge is to find the right balance.”

Other testimony challenged those concerns about anonymity, though. “Anonymity is also a two-way street,” says Patrick Murck, general counsel for the Bitcoin Foundation, in his prepared statement.

“A top dealer on Silk Road was actively working with federal law enforcement, the anonymity of Silk Road making it easier for them to make undercover drug deals and subsequent arrests,” he explains.

Murck also has some feedback for those that hold up Silk Road as an example of bitcoin’s dangers, cautioning against tying bitcoin and Silk Road too closely together. He cites the Genesis Block’s analysis of the contribution that Silk Road made to bitcoin pricing.

In late December 2010 and early 2011, people buying bitcoins to make Silk Road purchases may have spiked the price from $.30 up to $.80. The price was then boosted by mainstream media attention, before settling at around $5, he says. Further price spikes were unrelated to Silk Road, and even its takedown in October had little long-lasting effect.

“The less this colors public and policymaker assessments of Bitcoin, the better,” he argues in his testimony. “Criminals do turn the beneficial instruments of society to their ends. But overreacting to this simple and obvious fact because Bitcoin is exotic and new could delay Americans enjoyment of Bitcoin’s benefits, which are vastly greater than its potential costs.”

Decentralized vs centralized currencies

Jerry Brito, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and director of its Technology Policy Program, testifies that a decentralized currency like bitcoin would in any case be less appealing to online crooks than a centralized digital currency, like Liberty Reserve, which was taken down after its founders were arrested.

“While of growing concern, to date, virtual currencies have yet to overtake more traditional methods to move funds internationally.”

“Serious criminals looking to hide their tracks are more likely to choose a centralized virtual currency run by an intermediary willing to lie to regulators for a fee, rather than a decentralized currency like bitcoin that, as a technical matter, must make a record of every transaction, even if pseudonymously,” Brito points out.

Brito compares centralized digital currency Liberty Reserve’s estimated $6bn in crime-related revenues to under $200m in drug sales via Silk Road. He adjusts the Silk Road revenues down from the oft-quoted $1bn figure to reflect bitcoin value over the entire period.

At least one regulator seems sympathetic. FinCEN director Jennifer Shasky Calvery points out in her testimony that virtual currencies have yet to overtake more traditional methods to move funds internationally, whether for legi
timate or criminal purposes.

“Any financial institution could be exploited for money laundering purposes,” she points out, adding, “While of growing concern, to date, virtual currencies have yet to overtake more traditional methods to move funds internationally, whether for legitimate or criminal purposes.”

Inter-departmental collaboration

FinCEN itself is hard at work, and several FinCEN virtual currency experts gave a comprehensive presentation on the topic to an audience of Federal and state bank examiners at an FFIEC Payment Systems Risk Conference, Calvery says, adding that the agency also works with the FBI, with the Treasury Cyber Working Group, and “a community of other financial intelligence units”.

This inter-departmental collaboration is an important strut of the government’s approach to law enforcement in virtual currency, says Raman, especially in the context of the Government’s Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime. The Department of Justice works closely with FinCEN and the State Department, and it was this relationship that enabled the co-ordinated targeting of Liberty Reserve, he says, adding:

“Such coordinated actions are integral tools in combating illicit finance. Investigations into illicit virtual currency businesses therefore often require considerable cooperation from international partners.”

He highlighted the fact that the Liberty Reserve takedown involved co-operation between 17 countries.

The Foundation is eager to talk up its relationship with regulators, even if Murck finds “details on which we might quibble,” such as the Foundation’s desire for a notice-and-comment process before FinCEN issued its new virtual currency guidance in March. However, the Foundation has found federal regulators welcoming on the whole, he says.

Harsh words for state regulators

He reserved harsh words for regulators at the state level, however, particularly calling out “one state regulator”, which he said issued 22 subpoenas to bitcoin-related businesses, and made TV statements about “narcoterrorism”. He’s referring to New York’s Department of Financial Services, who made that statement on the air.

“Irresponsible public statements like these make it more likely that legitimate bitcoin businesses will relocate to more welcoming countries,” Murck said.

However, he added that he saw positive signs among both state regulators and banking executives, indicating that greater understanding is coming.

Calvery echoed Murck’s conciliatory overtones, talking about an outreach effort to court the bitcoin community. FinCEN met with the Bitcoin Foundation in late August, and has invited it to present to a Congressionally-chartered forum, the Bank Secrecy Act Advisory Group (BSAAG) scheduled for mid-December.

Jeremy Allaire, founder of merchant payment services firm Circle Internet Financial, which recently received $9m in funding, also wants a collaborative approach to regulation. He identifies several dangers for an unregulated bitcoin community in his testimony, including tax dodging, fraud, and terrorism. Illiquidity and volatility are two other dangers, he warned, predicting wild price fluctuation if central banks and institutional investors are not able to act as market-makers in bitcoin.

“I believe we are at the forefront of another twenty year journey of Internet-led transformation, this time in our global financial systems, and the opportunity is to foster that economic change while simultaneously putting in place the safeguards that only government can enable,” he says.