French lawmaker calls for crypto committee

With legal questions mounting over the push to adopt cryptocurrencies as an accepted form of payment across countries around the world, French Senator Nathalie Goulet on Thursday (July 28) pushed before a committee to regulate their use in that nation, according to a letter posted on the Senate website.

The Ministry of Economy and Finance said there were more than 5,000 cryptocurrencies in circulation around the world last year, the most popular and profitable being bitcoin. Although the crypto market has crashed since it peaked in November, many people still rely on cryptocurrency as their primary means of payment in all situations where it is allowed, the letter said.

But there are still many people who don’t understand it, a scenario that calls for government intervention to help everyone be on a level playing field when it comes to cryptocurrencies.

“If the press regularly reports on the development of crypto-assets and their innovative nature, and that social networks are full of ads extolling their advantages and announcing product launches, each more grandiose than the other, the object remains poorly identified and many of our Citizens, strangers to this the technology, struggles to understand it, says the letter.

“Crypto-assets, thanks to the blockchain, pursue a simple goal: to make encrypted, anonymous, secure, transparent exchanges possible for users and, above all, opaque for the authorities,” according to the letter. “The complete absence of regulation by a central authority allows users to escape government oversight entirely.”

The European Parliament and the Council have passed a Transfer of Funds (TFR) proposal aimed at combating money laundering through crypto-assets, forcing companies to identify the stakeholders from the first euro exchanged, but that rule does not come into effect immediately.

“If the financing of terrorism via crypto-assets is now a recognized problem, it is actually only the tip of the iceberg,” the letter said. “Crypto-assets are today used to support or participate in many other illegal activities.”

Related: French MEP wants Binance approval Regulatory Review

In June, a French member of the European Parliament (MEP) wrote a letter pushing for the country’s market regulator to review the approval of the Binance cryptocurrency exchange, saying a news report highlighted potential money laundering activity on the platform.

Aurore Lalucq, who is also a member of the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, wants regulators to justify their “incomprehensible” decision to register a Binance entity as a digital asset service provider.