Latest news with #BankSecrecyAct
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Crypto privacy tests limits of Trump's deregulatory push
A version of this article appeared in our The Decentralised newsletter on August 12. Sign up here. Donald Trump's deregulatory blitz has its limits. It doesn't seem to like financial privacy, an omission that appears to have galvanised crypto devs and policy experts. To recap: Last week, Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm was convicted of a federal crime. The week before, the developers of Samourai Wallet pleaded guilty to the same crime. The same day the Samourai devs threw in the towel, Trump's crypto policy team came out with a 166-page report titled 'Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology.' Not everyone liked what they saw. The report recommended expanding the infamous Patriot Act to cover crypto technology, labelling certain tools 'primary money laundering concerns.' It suggested to force DeFi protocols to comply with the Bank Secrecy Act and its anti-money laundering provisions. 'This could include services that custody assets or have centralised governance, including through instances in which governance tokens are held by one or a small group of persons that can effectively assert control,' the report reads. There is a cost to privacy. As one of Storm's prosecutors put it, 'Isn't anonymity just another word for concealment?' The argument appeared to be that we've all got something to hide, but that criminals have more to hide. There's also a cost to not having privacy. As one of Storm's attorneys put it, 'How would you feel if someone took your bank account and published it on the internet?' The received wisdom of the DeFi community is that blockchain-based finance will never go mainstream without privacy. The devs are fighting back. 'To me, the medium-term target is to make privacy [the] default in wallets,' Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said in a recent appearance on the Bankless podcast. 'The biggest mistake that we're making as an ecosystem right now is that we came up with this concept of a privacy wallet. We should not have privacy wallets — privacy should be a feature of wallets.' Buterin added that the Ethereum Foundation has started working on the issue, and more information can be expected in the next several months. It has also pledged an additional $500,000 towards Storm's legal costs. Last week, Electric Coin Company CEO Josh Swihart asked senators to protect financial privacy in a forthcoming mega-bill. 'This is not about hiding crime; it is about protecting law-abiding citizens from constant surveillance, data breaches, and unjust profiling,' Swihart wrote. 'Treating all privacy-oriented digital assets as suspect would be akin to banning locks because criminals might hide behind closed doors.' Top DeFi stories of the week This week in DeFi governance PROPOSAL: Uniswap DAO considers incorporation in Wyoming PROPOSAL: Lido DAO considers token buyback program PROPOSAL: Polygon DAO considers raising validators' required minimum stake Post of the week Trump promised a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve stocked with crypto seized by US law enforcement. According to one rumour, the first contribution will come from a crypto developer. Aleks Gilbert is DL News' New York-based DeFi correspondent. Got a tip? Email at aleks@ Connectez-vous pour accéder à votre portefeuille
Business Wire
5 days ago
- Business
- Business Wire
Finward Bancorp Announces Termination of Consent Order
MUNSTER, Ind.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Finward Bancorp (Nasdaq: FNWD) (the 'Bancorp'), the holding company for Peoples Bank (the 'Bank'), today announced that on August 6, 2025 the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation ('FDIC') and the Indiana Department of Financial Institutions ('DFI') terminated the Consent Order issued to the Bank that was effective on November 7, 2023 relating to the Bank's compliance with the Bank Secrecy Act and its implementing regulations (collectively, the 'BSA'). The termination of the Consent Order follows the Bank's successful resolution of the deficiencies in the Bank's BSA compliance and anti-money laundering compliance program, which was the subject of the Consent Order. 'We are very pleased to announce the termination of the Consent Order and the successful resolution of this matter. We want to convey our sincere appreciation and thanks to our board of directors, management team, and staff who worked tirelessly to achieve the requirements of the Consent Order, satisfy our regulators' concerns, and strengthen the BSA/AML compliance program of Peoples Bank,' said Benjamin J. Bochnowski, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Bancorp. 'As a company, we are proud of the hard work and dedication our team has shown throughout this process. The termination of the Consent Order reflects our ongoing commitment to strong compliance, sound banking practices, and serving our customers with integrity. We also want to thank the regulatory and supervisory staff at the FDIC and DFI for their diligent efforts and oversight as we enhanced the Bank's BSA/AML compliance program.' About Finward Bancorp Finward Bancorp is a locally managed and independent financial holding company headquartered in Munster, Indiana, whose activities are primarily limited to holding the stock of Peoples Bank. Peoples Bank provides a wide range of personal, business, electronic and wealth management financial services from its 26 locations in Lake and Porter Counties in Northwest Indiana and Chicagoland. Finward Bancorp's common stock is quoted on The NASDAQ Stock Market, LLC under the symbol FNWD. The website provides information on Peoples Bank's products and services, and Finward Bancorp's investor relations.
Mint
5 days ago
- Business
- Mint
JPMorgan denied it closed account linked to former Kansas governor on religious grounds, letter shows
NEW YORK, Aug 7 (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase denied it closed an account linked to former Kansas Governor Sam Brownback on religious grounds, and did not receive information it requested from him before shutting the account, according to a letter seen by Reuters. Brownback, a Republican who chairs the National Committee for Religious Freedom, claims the bank canceled the group's new account on religious grounds in 2022. He also alleged Chase shuns conservatives and religious groups. President Donald Trump has accused the nation's biggest lenders of discriminating against him and his conservative supporters by denying them banking services, a practice known as "debanking." "We don't discontinue client relationships because of a religious or political affiliation, and we didn't with your account," wrote Larry Thode, a managing director at Chase, in a letter in October 2022. The contents of the letter have not been previously reported. "The information your organization gave to us at account opening triggered our request for additional information. That had nothing to do with any religious affiliation." The bank did not obtain the information before the account was closed because its bankers were not able to connect with Brownback's staff in a timely manner, it said. "We apologize for that," Thode wrote. A spokesman for Brownback said the letter was the first time Chase had discussed regulations including the Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money laundering regulations as a cause for the account being canceled. "They still didn't address why our account was closed just three weeks after opening." Thode did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment. The White House declined to comment on Brownback's case. (Reporting by Nupur Anand in New York, editing by Lananh Nguyen and Chris Reese)
Forbes
6 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Hester Peirce Is Right: It's Time To Restore Financial Privacy Rights
One of the best things about the first Trump administration is that Hester Peirce has served as a commissioner on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission since 2018. She has fiercely advocated improving financial regulation to help foster stronger and more competitive private capital markets. Her speeches always project strong reasoning and principles, so this week's financial privacy speech isn't at all surprising. The substance of the speech gets into the weeds of the Bank Secrecy Act, and Americans everywhere should hope the rest of the Trump administration is listening. Yes, this administration has been more crypto-friendly than the Biden administration. But it has, so far, been unwilling to directly tackle the privacy issues surrounding the BSA. There have been some good signs, but Americans will never realize the full potential of crypto-based technologies until Congress restores the Constitutional rights they infringed on with the BSA. And that's why principles are so important. Financial Privacy Rights Slowly Whittled Away For those unfamiliar, the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment protects people from the government conducting 'unreasonable searches and seizures.' It states that this right 'shall not be violated' and requires law enforcement to obtain a warrant by demonstrating (to a judge) 'probable cause' to suspect someone of committing a crime. As a result, law enforcement cannot randomly search through our property. This protection was important to the authors of the U.S. Constitution because they recognized—even witnessed—what a chilling effect the government can have on someone's ability to live their life with warrantless searches and seizures. They had witnessed, among other things, British soldiers using general warrants (writs of assistance) to enter any place to search for anything deemed 'prohibited.' The framers of the Constitution explicitly constrained that sort of blank-check power because it could so easily be abused. By right, they argued, people should be able to live their lives unmolested and without fear of such abuse. So, the Fourth Amendment included a very high standard for law enforcement to meet before conducting a search. The Fourth Amendment did not include any footnotes, much less one that says, 'Unless law enforcement officials need more tools.' However, because of the BSA, a law Congress passed in 1970, the Fourth Amendment now has a huge footnote: It no longer applies to Americans' financial records stored at banks and other financial institutions. Third Party Doctrine Harms Financial Privacy To make a long story short: After a few (split) U.S. Supreme Court decisions, including a blistering dissent by none other than Justice Thurgood Marshall, U.S. law makes an exception to the Fourth Amendment for Americans' financial records due to something called the third-party doctrine. This doctrine basically says that because a customer gives their information to a financial institution (a third party), the customer can no longer expect a right to privacy. Armed with this doctrine, the federal government has spent years building a surveillance operation that effectively deputizes financial companies—not just banks—as law enforcement investigators. The reason that crypto presents such a problem for the BSA regime is that the new technology's very nature allows people to electronically transfer funds without those companies. Put differently, crypto reduces the need to rely on those third parties, the same ones that the government has co-opted to enhance law enforcement's ability to catch criminals. That's a big political problem, of course, because it means these new technologies are forcing Congress to confront what they created with the BSA. They must grapple with, for example, whether Americans are supposed to start reporting, as banks currently do, their friends and neighbors for 'suspicious activity.' Technology Can Protect Financial Privacy Has technology finally outrun the BSA, so much so that the law endangers what's left of our Fourth Amendment protections? That's precisely what some of the Supreme Court Justices feared during those cases in the 1970s, and it certainly seems so. In the 1970s, the BSA amounted to requiring banks to store paper checks, but today's financial records are an electronic gateway to virtually everything we do. On principle, though, there really is no debate. For instance, as Commissioner Peirce argues in her speech, 'For these and other new technologies to be able to play a role in protecting Americans' privacy, government must guard jealously the ability of Americans to use them freely. Such protective measures may run counter to regulatory instincts, but overcoming those instincts is crucial to maintaining the freedom and prosperity of the American people.' Peirce is spot on. And while it's great that some in Congress have started waking up to problems with the BSA regime, most members remain preoccupied with tangential issues, such as the customer data private companies have. In many cases, even the members who are tackling the so-called debanking issue are still ignoring the role that the BSA plays in people having their bank accounts closed. The BSA Regime Needs to Go It is very easy to see that the BSA regime is an inefficient and ineffective tool for law enforcement. It relies on employees at financial institutions to function as if they were law enforcement officers, and it creates incentives for them to over-report. The result is a regime that collects almost 30 million reports per year (nearly 75,000 per day), even though law enforcement investigates fewer than 4,000 related cases per year. Meanwhile, virtually everyone seems to be ignoring the potential for abuse of power by the government, the problem that the U.S. Constitution was created to protect people from in the first place. There is no doubt that private actors can misuse information and misuse technology to commit crimes. But, as Peirce points out, that's no reason to fear technology or treat it as a villain. The important thing to do is go after the real villains, something that can easily be done 'while still ensuring widespread access to fundamental American rights.' The BSA regime clearly has an imbalance, one that heavily favors law enforcement over citizens' rights to financial privacy. But the proper balance between these competing needs is in the Fourth Amendment, so Congress should restore it. Doing so might be the single most important way to promote U.S. leadership in digital assets and financial technology. Peirce gets it. Hopefully others in the Trump administration do too.
Yahoo
31-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's Top Crypto Guys: U.S. DeFi Will Thrive, Assures Bitcoin Reserve Is Coming
President Donald Trump's crypto working group finally issued its massive report and its pages of U.S. policy recommendations, and two of the people behind that effort told CoinDesk that decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols should fare just fine in the administration's vision of the U.S. sector. "Decentralized protocols can definitely meet the rules of the road," said Bo Hines, the executive director for the group of regulators and senior administration officials that collectively issued the 163-page report on Wednesday. In a CoinDesk TV interview with Jennifer Sanasie, Hines and the Treasury Department's Tyler Williams shared some of the highlights of the lengthy report, including its treatment of DeFi. "We want people innovating and developing here in the U.S.," Hines said from the White House, and that requires making sure developers "feel as if they have the rules of the road laid out for them." Hines said the administration has tried to take "immense steps to do that and offer guidance." He said Treasury's removal of Tornado Cash sanctions should show "we understand how important immutable smart contracts are in open source code." Williams added that the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act passed recently by the House of Representatives, has already made strides to ensure the industry would have an avenue for complying with the Bank Secrecy Act. He said this week's report delves into some of the ground already covered by lawmakers. The report was embraced by industry insiders as another step forward in Trump's aggressive crypto agenda, and Hines called it "probably the most comprehensive piece of work on digital assets ever produced, and I don't think that should be lost on anyone." Virtually all of the policy initiatives and efforts described in its pages are already familiar to the dozens of crypto lobbyists working the front lines in Washington, so it didn't bring any surprise initiatives. "While many of the policy items that you'll see are not unfamiliar to the audience and to the public, I think we put a little bit more meat on the bones in terms of the action items we wanna see," Williams said. One detail that went missing in the report was a description of the next steps for the so-called Bitcoin Strategic Reserve contemplated by the administration, based on an order from Trump that such a stockpile should be initiated. Hines, who has been asked similar questions about the reserve for months without offering a significant update, said, "People will be very pleased with what we come up with." "There's an infrastructure piece of this, as well, and Treasury's working diligently on that, making sure everything's set up properly, so that we can move forward in the best way possible." At the White House's Wednesday launch of the report, the administration invited industry representatives to share the moment. Cody Carbone, CEO of the Digital Chamber that lobbies in Washington on crypto policy, said about 40 people attended alongside senior officials from the administration, including Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, crypto czar David Sacks, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins and Attorney General Pam Bondi. Carbone said in a memo on the event that the officials were "gracious in thanking the industry voices and experts who helped contribute to this comprehensive report," which he said included several from his in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
