Yesterday, Christy Goldsmith Romero, the Commissioner of Commodities Futures and Traditional Commission (CFTC) released a statement on digital asset management. She informed them about the risks and uncertainties associated with digital assets in his speech.
On the occasion of City Week 2023, a three-day event on 24-26 April discusses sustainable finance and investment post COP27. The CFTC Commissioner also remembered Satoshi Nakomoto the person who invented Bitcoin and blockchain on his 12th anniversary, the day on which he sent his final message to developers.
According to reports, in the City Week event conducted at Guildhall, London, the CFTC Commissioner, Christy Goldsmith mainly focused on the digital assets management and message of Satoshi Nakamoto to the developers. She delivered his speech one day before the 12th anniversary of Nakomoto’s last message. “It has long been speculated that he left disillusioned after PC-World published that Bitcoin could be used for payments to WikiLeaks after it was blacklisted by banks”, says Romero.
Currently, the issue of digital assets security seems the most debatable topic across countries. Several countries faced illicit financing, fraud, and other misuse using digital assets. While sharing her views on the difference between Satoshi’s vision for a peer-to-peer network without any third trusted party, the CFTC Commissioner said this is completely different from what Satoshi has envisioned.
Eradication of third parties from the network inspired a global financial services ecosystem of platforms, projects, intermediaries, and markets. Additionally, she informed that most of the present digital assets are traded on centralized exchanges which is completely different from Satoshi’s vision. However, in the last few years, the market has grown substantially worth $3 trillion because investors trusted these exchanges. On the other side, there’s a loss of trust in this due to high-profile meltdowns and contagion, leaving investors with nearly $2 trillion in losses.
In her speech, Christy Goldsmith highlighted the illicit uses of digital assets in drug purchases, human trafficking, ransomware, and cyber terrorism. According to the speech delivered by her, “The use of digital assets for illicit finance poses national security and other risks.” However, the United States has been very active in combating threats merged due to the illicit use of digital assets. In 2020, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) seized the 300 Cryptocurrency accounts of Hamas, al-Qaeda, and ISIS. At the Week 2023 event, Romero raised her concern about the vulnerability involved in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) as 82% of attacks are cyber-attacks targeted at DeFi. It can be assumed by his repeated warnings on digital assets management that this sector requires more reforms in the future to tackle new emerging threats from various domains.
