Rumored US Bitcoin regulations could help gambling, hurt exchanges

Bad news for digital currency exchanges could turn out to be great news for the gambling industry. Rumors that the outgoing Trump administration might place new regulations on the digital currency space has exchanges worried it might hurt their business.

Treasure Secretary Steven Mnuchin is rumored to be readying new regulations for the digital currency space. If they are what they are rumored to be, it would force corporations to follow Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) rules, but also only cooperate with other parties that also follow those rules. Such a measure would bring the entire U.S. digital currency space in line with regulations that have been expected of banking and gambling businesses.

The exchange space isn’t happy about it though. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong took to Twitter to explain why he thinks this is a terrible idea:

If this crypto regulation comes out, it would be a terrible legacy and have long standing negative impacts for the U.S. In the early days of the internet there were people who called for it to be regulated like the phone companies. Thank goodness they didn’t.