NFTs Should Fall Under Anti-Money Laundering Law, DOJ Says

Attorney General Merrick Garland wants to expand the Bank Secrecy Act to non-fungible tokens to deter money laundering.

In a report to President Joe Biden earlier this month, the US Justice Department warned that NFT players could be using the digital assets for illicit financing, by “self-laundering, a sequence in which criminals purchase an NFT with illicit funds and then resell to a purchaser who pays for it with clean funds unconnected to a prior crime.”

Application of the act “often turns on whether the transacted item qualifies as ‘value that substitutes for currency,’” the report notes, while “NFT platforms ...