The policies issued by countries represented by the United States have far-reaching impact and are of great significance to the development of the innovation field.
In this global transformation of blockchain technology and digital assets, in addition to fully understanding China’s position, we still need to grasp the attitudes and layout of other countries in emerging fields. Among them, the policies issued by the countries represented by the United States have far-reaching influence and are of great significance to the development of this innovative field.
In April of this year, the blockchain was further included in the category of "new infrastructure". China attaches great importance to the intrinsic value of the blockchain, and various localities have also introduced related industrial policies, hoping to optimize and upgrade the economic structure.
U.S. policies are currently not only conducting transactional supervision within the framework of existing laws and regulations, such as preventing illegal securities issuance, protecting investor rights, anti-money laundering, and preventing tax evasion, etc., but also gradually establishing a clear blockchain supervision system.
Strict regulatory attitude
The United States has always maintained a strict regulatory attitude towards the emerging technology of blockchain. As early as 2013, the US financial intelligence agency FinCEN stated that it would establish a meaningful regulatory framework for virtual currencies to prevent illegal activities caused by regulatory loopholes in new technologies. And put the focus on the first token issuance. On April 3, 2019, the US Securities Regulatory Commission officially issued the "Blockchain Token Regulatory Guidelines", clarifying that all digital currencies that fail the Howay test will be unified as securities.
The U.S. regulation of blockchain technology relies on the mutual cooperation between various agencies, mainly the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), U.S. Commodity Futures Commission (CFTC), U.S. Financial Intelligence Agency (FinCEN), and sometimes the U.S. State Administration of Taxation ( IRS) will also issue relevant guidelines.
At present, the United States has introduced relevant regulatory policies at both the federal and local levels. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) jointly issued the "Joint Statement on Measures Taken on Virtual Currency" in January 2018 to supervise possible violations. In the same year, the CFTC also announced the establishment of a virtual currency committee and a blockchain committee. The former focuses on the encrypted digital currency industry, and the latter will strengthen the application of blockchain technology in the financial field.
The US Internal Revenue Service is also actively cooperating with the introduction of relevant policies. In 2019, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) officially issued a new guide for calculating the tax payable of holding cryptocurrency, which is used to calculate the tax payable of holding cryptocurrency. On October 26, 2020, the IRS followed the latest developments in the blockchain field and required investors to pay taxes on the income from airdrops and hard forks.
The United States has always lacked a consistent regulatory strategy in the blockchain field. The SEC has partially assumed the function of cryptocurrency supervision, but it has been criticized repeatedly for innovation. The U.S. Congress has recognized the backward behavior in the field of blockchain development and cryptocurrency regulation, and is committed to promoting the U.S. private sector to lead innovation by formulating regulations and policies to ensure that the U.S. maintains its global leadership in key technologies.
Strengthen R&D support for blockchain
In October 2018, the "American Leadership Strategy in Advanced Manufacturing" issued by the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) mentioned that new research needs to be carried out to develop or update standards and guidelines in order to Implement new network security technologies in manufacturing systems, including artificial intelligence for identifying and processing threats, and blockchain for information security in the field of agile manufacturing.
However, in 2019, the two reports issued by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy did not mention blockchain. For example, in February 2019, the OSTP report "The United States Will Dominate the Industry of the Future" stated that the Trump administration has been focusing on four key technologies, including artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, quantum information science and 5G, which are expected to be in the future. To promote the prosperity of the United States and improve national security, blockchain has not been mentioned as a core technology.
However, this situation has now undergone a major change. In November 2020, the Acting Deputy Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy and Environmental Affairs of the U.S. State Department, Manisha Singh, stated that the Trump administration hopes to "support and participate in blockchain Industry" and hope to "maintain competitiveness and strengthen the US leadership in the development of blockchain." This is the first time that a relatively senior person in the Trump administration has made policy supportive comments on blockchain.
Blockchain special bill on the agenda
In 2020, due to the continuous advancement of the proof of concept and small-scale pilots of the digital currency DC/EP of the People's Bank of China, the U.S. financial regulatory authority has accelerated the pace of establishing a blockchain regulatory system, and paid more attention to the innovative significance of blockchain and digital currency.
According to China Times, the US House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee recently held a marathon legislative hearing. The hearing recorded 38 bills, including the "Blockchain Innovation Act" and the "Digital Taxonomy Act" reported by members of Congress to the House of Representatives. 》Two bills, which are the most complete bills proposed in the U.S. Congress to solve the regulatory transparency of blockchain tokens.
But in many hearings on blockchain and digital currencies, the different voices of congressmen were equally loud, and some congressmen called for a bill to ban all cryptocurrencies.
In the face of the US presidential general election, what attitude the new government will adopt, and how far the "Blockchain Innovation Act" and the "Digital Classification Act" can go in Congress requires a big question mark.
At present, it seems that for a long time, the technical officials of the US financial regulatory agency will continue to paper existing regulatory regulations to adapt to the rapidly changing blockchain field.
Original article, author: Intelligent Hom.