'Crypto Industry Is Spending Millions': Al Green Makes Stunning Corruption Claims In Congress | US

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]Mr. Chairman, we understand that cryptocurrency fraud is something that has to be dealt with by way of regulation.

[00:00:15]Um currently, using digital methodologies and unregulated currencies, TCOs can remain anonymous and evade law enforcement.

[00:00:39]This ability to be pseudo anonymous, pseudonymity, is a problem. Pseudonymity, it's a problem because we have allowed a system to develop that allows people to transfer unlimited amounts of funds without identifying themselves.

[00:01:08]Um Mr. Stefel, how do you propose we regulate such that we can deal with the pseudonymity aspect of the transfers of large sums of money, which by the way may go to terrorist organizations, uh used for ransom purposes, extortion.

[00:01:33]How do we deal with that?

[00:01:37]Congressman, when we established the ransomware task force, one of its core recommendations was to ensure that know-your-customer and anti-money laundering capabilities were required of exchanges that it that transmit these currencies.

[00:01:51]Uh in addition, we think that similar due diligence measures can also be taken in other aspects of the ecosystem. For example, in the domain registration space that would also help us take a more scaled approach to combating a range of illicit activity online.

[00:02:06]Now, pseudonymity exist and is efficacious because you have peer-to-peer transfer of money, cryptocurrency.

[00:02:21]In the banking system, you have a central bank.

[00:02:26]Goes to the central bank, then to a person.

[00:02:31]We still have this problem of peer-to-peer transfers. By the way, we can catch many of the culprits, but it's difficult. And some of the culprits get away because of peer-to-peer business.

[00:02:48]And the crypto industry is spending millions upon millions of dollars to make sure Congress has people within it who are going to support the peer-to-peer transfers. They they place privacy above the ability to prevent extortion, to prevent avoiding paying taxes on money.

[00:03:25]The pseudonymity has to be dealt with such that we, as you said, know your customer. But you can't know your customer if you don't have a customer to know.

[00:03:36]So again, I I'm not pressing you. I I understand you understand the problem.

[00:03:42]Uh but the problem is is actually bigger than simply saying we'd like to regulate when millions upon millions are being spent to buy the best Congress that money can buy to support the crypto industry's insatiable appetite to maintain pseudonymity.

[00:04:11]I I welcome a comment if you have one.

[00:04:18]The ability to investigate illicit activity is central to the government's ability to defend the nation and so I would assert that there's definitely a need to have greater visibility into a range of activity online which is one of the reasons why in my written testimony I reiterated the need to reauthorize the Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Act of 2015.

[00:04:40]Um I have 11 seconds. Yes, I read body language quite well. Thank thank you so much. Um I spent my career as a prosecutor investigating cases involving bulk cash smuggling and networks of hawalas and shell companies and high value art. Uh there was no ability to trace those things on an open public ledger.

[00:04:58]Uh we work very closely with law enforcement today to be able to combat fraud and financial crime in crypto because we actually have the ability to watch every transaction in real time and there's a lot of benefit there.

[00:05:11]Thank you. Thank you. And and every transaction is more than just a few thousand transactions.

[00:05:19]Do you agree?

[00:05:20]Every transaction is more than a few thousand transactions.

[00:05:24]I'm so sorry. I'm You said you you have the ability to watch every transaction.

[00:05:28]>> Every transaction in in real time on an open public ledger where >> Right. And what I'm saying to you that that isn't awesome number of transactions. It's it's an awesome number of transactions. We can now see more transactions in in on blockchains than we can in this traditional world.

[00:05:43]And in and in so doing you have to also not only see them, now you've got to look into each one of them so as to ascertain whether or not this is a part of some illicit trade. Absolutely. And we can now do that in on blockchains where you never could do that in the traditional financial system, right?

[00:06:01]Through networks of you know, wire transfers and bulk cash. Now we can see every transaction move on an open public ledger in real time and track and trace to build investigations and see >> Are you saying that all transactions are on the open public ledger?

[00:06:16]All transactions on public blockchains.

[00:06:18]So Bitcoin And public blockchain? Public blockchain.

[00:06:21]>> Okay. Do you agree that there are blockchains that you are not monitoring?

[00:06:25]I We we monitor every blockchain.

[00:06:28]Every blockchain in history? I mean every blockchain that exists? When you lose visibility on financial transactions in the cryptocurrency world, it's often because it moves into a cryptocurrency exchange or off the blockchain. Certainly there are privacy tools and we are very very good at being able to track >> Permit me to ask this as a follow-up.

[00:06:47]The people who engage in extortion the people who engage in extortion and succeed with the extortion explain how they elude the transparency that you are speaking of. It's it's really become a race. It's a race between law enforcement and bad actors.

[00:07:04]Bad actors are trying to off-ramp their funds as fast as they can. So a ransom payment is made in Bitcoin for example, the FBI and and and others are using tools like TRM to track and trace. But it's this cat and mouse game that has always existed and that's why we have to shut down those off-ramps and just just real quickly, those off-ramps are highly regulated. They're required to have in the United States today, they're required to have compliance controls >> I'm I'm in agreement with you. That's why I mentioned the awesome number because of the number and the speed at which these transactions takes take place and the pseudonymity associated with it, it makes it difficult to catch the culprit who's moving quickly before you can get to him. And that's why it's so important that law enforcement and regulators have the tools to move as fast as these bad actors. I I agree with you. Thank you. Thank you.

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