a16z says crypto money laundering is evil foreigners fault [Video]

‘Crypto’ money laundering crackdowns should focus on those dastardly foreigners, not noble and upstanding American operators, says American venture capital group Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).

On October 14, Michele Korver and Jai Ramaswamy, respectively, the chief regulatory and legal officers at the tech-focused a16z, posted a blog detailing “concrete steps to address money laundering” involving digital assets.

The authors start with the obvious, saying “combating money laundering is really hard” due to it mimicking legitimate activity. But they argue that “money laundering is never the cause of criminal activity,” therefore, it’s “not a crypto-specific problem.”

The authors point out that money laundering existed before ‘crypto’ and, should crypto ever disappear, its absence “will merely drive the few criminals who use crypto to other tools to move or conceal their ill-gotten gains.” The authors apparently see no connection between crypto’s rise and the subsequent explosion in the volume of ransomware attacks and ‘pig butchering’ scams. Those ‘few’ criminals are mighty …