Inventory of U.S. Blockchain Policy
In this global transformation of blockchain technology and digital assets, in addition to a comprehensive understanding of China's position, we still need to grasp the attitude and layout of other countries in emerging fields. Among them, the policies issued by countries represented by the United States have far-reaching impacts and are of great significance to the development of this innovation 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 relevant industrial policies, hoping to bring about the optimization and upgrading of the economic structure.
secondary title
Strict regulatory attitude
The United States has always maintained a strict regulatory attitude towards blockchain, an emerging technology. 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 new technology regulatory loopholes. And put the focus on the initial coin offering. On April 3, 2019, the US Securities Regulatory Commission officially released the "Blockchain Token Supervision Guidelines", making it clear that all digital currencies that fail the Howay test will be uniformly regarded as securities.
The supervision of blockchain technology in the United States relies on the mutual cooperation between various agencies, mainly the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the US Commodity Futures Commission (CFTC), the US Financial Intelligence Agency (FinCEN), and sometimes the US State Administration of Taxation ( IRS) will also issue relevant guidelines.
At present, the United States has introduced relevant regulatory policies both at the federal level and at the local level. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) jointly issued the "Joint Statement on Measures against Virtual Currencies" in January 2018 to supervise possible violations. In the same year, CFTC also announced the establishment of the Virtual Currency Committee and the 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 US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) officially released new guidelines for calculating the tax payable for holding cryptocurrencies, which are used to calculate the taxes payable for holding cryptocurrencies. On October 26, 2020, the IRS kept up with the latest developments in the blockchain field and required investors to pay taxes on the income obtained from airdrops and hard forks.
secondary title
Strengthen R&D support for blockchain
In October 2018, the US National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) issued the "US Leadership Strategy in Advanced Manufacturing", which mentioned that new research work is needed to develop or update standards and guidelines in order to Implement new cybersecurity technologies in manufacturing systems, including artificial intelligence for identifying and handling threat events, blockchain for information security in agile manufacturing, and more.
However, in 2019, neither of the two reports released by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy mentioned blockchain. For example, in February 2019, OSTP's report "The United States Will Dominate Future Industries" proposed 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 American prosperity and improve national security, blockchain has not been mentioned as a core technology.
secondary title
Blockchain special bill included in the agenda
In 2020, due to the continuous advancement of the proof of concept and small-scale pilots of the Chinese central bank's digital currency DC/EP, the US 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 Energy and Commerce Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives recently held a marathon legislative hearing. The hearing recorded 38 bills, including the "Blockchain Innovation Act" and the "Digital Taxonomy Act" that members of Congress reported to the House of Representatives. "Two bills, which are the most complete bills to address the regulatory transparency of blockchain tokens proposed so far in the U.S. Congress.
But in multiple hearings on blockchain and digital currencies, different voices from members of Congress were equally loud, with some members calling for a bill to ban all cryptocurrencies.
In the face of the U.S. presidential re-election, what attitude the new government will adopt and how far the "Blockchain Innovation Act" and "Digital Taxonomy Act" can go in Congress need to be marked with a big question mark.
It now appears that for quite some time, the technocrats of the U.S. financial regulator will continue to paper over existing regulations to adapt to the ever-innovating blockchain space.
