Interestingly, in a recent US congressional session, Senate Banking Chairman Mike Crapo said that “As Cryptocurrencies are a global innovation it would almost be impossible to ban them”. Crapo seems to believe that the US ought to be encouraging debate and formulating the rules around Cryptocurrencies. He further said, “I believe that the US should lead in developing these innovations and what the rules of the road should be”.

Perhaps this helps to explain why the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) is recruiting staff, intending to operate nodes for many of the major Blockchains. The SEC has stated that it wants to “support its efforts to monitor risk, improve compliance and inform commission policy concerning digital assets.” The SEC intends to have all the data from the first “Block” (genesis) of a Blockchain onwards. To do this the SEC will need to analyse the complete history of all the different Blockchains that exist - which is no mean feat. The SEC could contact Byte Tree, which has already spent six years doing this by creating a “clean” database of every Bitcoin mined, and all the activity on the Ethereum Blockchain!

Having a clean database is not only vital for asset managers, which is why Byte Tree have done this. It also enables one to see the % of Cryptocurrency held by miners which have not been sold and, more importantly, can enable one to track down when a wallet owned which Bitcoin, where it came from and where it went to. This granular data could assist those who wish to investigate the holdings of Cryptocurrencies, and so track down taxes due and the source of funds for those involved in nefarious activities. Hence the SEC and the US Government’s interest.