According to CoinDesk, Brian Nelson, Under Secretary for Counterterrorism and Financial Intelligence at the U.S. Treasury Department, said at the CoinDesk annual consensus conference that the U.S. Treasury Department is not trying to ban cryptocurrency mixing services. He explained the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) 2023 proposal, which classifies mixers as "major money laundering issues" and requires virtual asset service providers (VASPs) to report any crypto transactions involving mixing to the agency. Although many industry insiders see FinCEN's proposal and the U.S. Department of Justice's increasing enforcement actions against mixing services including Tornado Cash and Samourai Wallet as a sign of a ban on mixing cryptocurrencies in the United States, the Treasury Department firmly denies it. Nelson said he sympathized with crypto users' desire for financial privacy, but suggested that the industry and the Treasury Department should work together to find ways to enhance privacy without facilitating terrorist financing. He also said that most of the mixers he saw were not actually created to enhance privacy, but to circumvent anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) reporting requirements, making them "very attractive" to bad actors including North Korea.
