Biden Administration Embarking on ‘Aggressive’ Tack for Cryptocurrency, White House Official Says

The Biden administration is just starting to ramp up regulatory scrutiny round cryptocurrencies, based on a senior White Home official.

Peter Harrell, senior director for worldwide economics and competitiveness with the Nationwide Safety Council, mentioned the administration would transfer to deal with a variety of dangers across the rising sector whereas searching for to place the U.S. as a pacesetter in digital asset innovation.

“You’re actually seeing the administration originally of what we count on can be an ongoing, fairly aggressive effort to ensure we perceive and deal with the entire vary of dangers that we see within the cryptocurrency house,” Mr. Harrell mentioned on the WSJ Danger & Compliance Discussion board on Tuesday.

The Biden administration is taking steps to manage so-called stablecoins—a type of digital foreign money backed by protected belongings similar to Treasurys—which regulators fear might be susceptible to the equal of a financial institution run if giant numbers of traders immediately rush to redeem them.

U.S. Securities and Change Fee Chair

Gary Gensler,

in the meantime, has taken aim at personal types of cash in speeches, saying he doesn’t see “a lot long-term viability” in them and promising higher regulatory oversight from his company.

Mr. Harrell’s remarks on Tuesday appeared to take a troublesome line on cryptocurrencies regardless of some considerations a very aggressive regulatory regime might transfer the digital foreign money markets abroad and trigger the U.S. to lose out on important intelligence and monetary leverage.

“We do assume that the cryptocurrency trade has some potential advantages,” Mr. Harrell mentioned, naming monetary inclusion as one instance. “However there are clearly a complete vary of dangers.”

“I feel you’re actually seeing the administration sort of transferring out on a lot of totally different strains of labor to be sure that now we have a sensible and efficient regulatory system in place for cryptocurrency,” he added.

Write to Dylan Tokar at dylan.tokar@wsj.com