US Secretary of the Treasury against bitcoin - The Cryptonomist

In a recent interview, US Secretary of the Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, said he agreed with the doubts and concerns of US President Donald Trump about cryptocurrencies and bitcoin in particular. 

During the interview, the Secretary said that bitcoin is used exclusively for illicit uses and that, compared to cash, it lends itself well to this type of purpose. An extremely pessimistic and inaccurate view of bitcoin and crypto in general.

Unfortunately, the bad reputation of bitcoin is probably due to the renowned Silk Road platform, founded in 2011 and now closed, which was used to buy and sell illegal goods.

The situation has developed over time. Taking into account the difficulty of home mining, it is easier to buy bitcoin than to mine them and this requires an entry point represented by the various services and exchanges that allow buying crypto through bank transfer or credit card. 

Clearly, the use of these centralised platforms involves the need to provide all the relevant personal details, seeing that all platforms have had to incorporate forms of KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti Money Laundering).

Therefore, it is obvious that now, since everything is traced and also often public and not anonymous, there are no more arguments that can be used to identify bitcoin as the currency of criminals.

Furthermore, various studies have verified that bitcoin is not the preferred method for criminals to money-launder and that the American dollar beats it by far in the form of cash.

That being said, the fact that Steven Mnuchin, as Secretary of the Treasury, as well as President Trump, are so concerned about the use of the dollar, of which they are the custodians and on which the strength of the US is based, is also normal.