U.S congressman calls for new laws that allow courts to reverse crypto transactions

• U.S. Congressman Bill Foster has suggested that courts should be able to reverse crypto transactions under certain circumstances.
• This has drawn criticism from the community some noting that this would be impossible in top blockchains which require miners to collude for a 51 percent attack.

US Congressman Bill Foster has suggested that the government should be granted the power to reverse some crypto transactions. The Illinois Democrat and co-chair of the House blockchain ‘caucus’ demonstrated his ignorance in the topic after stating that laws must be passed to allow federal courts to identify crypto users and reverse some transactions made in Bitcoin.

Sticking to the narrative that Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies are mainly used to facilitate criminal activities, Foster called for regulations that allowed for third parties “to go to a court to unmask participants under some circumstances.” He further added that cryptocurrencies should be “pseudo-anonymous, so the regulators can see” whenever the network is used fraudulently.

For Bitcoin at least, to reverse a transaction requires miners to collude and orchestrate a 51 percent attack. Surprisingly, this was briefly suggested by Binance crypto exchange CEO Changpeng Zhao back in 2019 after the exchange was hacked. Zhao had suggested ‘reorganizing the blockchain’ which would allow a reversal of the stolen Bitcoin. However, the idea was quickly shot down by major influencers led by Mike Novogratz and Ari Paul.

I am shocked that @cz_binance even went there. Talk of forking or reorganizing the blockchain is close to heresy. When the ethereum community did it the project was like 5 months old. A baby. Bitcoin now has $100bn market cap and is a legitimate store of wealth. https://t.co/pXSqiUcq0i

— Mike Novogratz (@novogratz) May 8, 2019

Foster has called for the development of new tools that will allow the government to identify users and specific transactions. His comments follow increased ransomware cases involving cryptocurrencies. Regulators have identified this as a major problem. CNBC’s Jim Cramer has since suggested that the market could see different government agencies collaborate to curb the growing trend. In addition to this, there is increased adoption of digital assets with most investors concerned about the wider trend.

For most people, if they’re going to have a big part of their net worth tied up in crypto assets, they’re going to want to have that security blanket of a trusted third party that can solve the problem.

Senator Cynthia Lummis supports Buy and Hodl strategy

Foster who is for the bigger part in support of crypto adoption, believes that the government needs to establish better laws. “There’s a significant sentiment, increasing sentiment, in Congress that if you’re participating in an anonymous crypto transaction that you’re a de-facto participant in a criminal conspiracy,” he added.

Incidentally, Senator Cynthia Lummis has touted Bitcoin as a retirement strategy. In an interview with CNBC, the Senator explained that Bitcoin offered a great alternative as investors look to diversify their portfolios.

“I worry about having all of our retirement monies denominated in U.S. dollars. As part of diversification, having a very diverse asset allocation, you don’t have all your eggs in one basket,” the Bitcoin-friendly Senator further added, “I think one of the strongest stores of value for the long run is bitcoin.”