Bitcoin (BTC) has dominated the financial media over recent weeks and that comes with good reason, the cryptocurrency has once again seen massively impressive growth, highlighted by a more than 50% increase in price throughout the month of December 2020.

While the cryptocurrency has seen price increases in the past, 2020 was a particularly strong performing year for the coin as increased popularity and adoption of the prospect of Bitcoin becoming a form of ‘digital gold’ saw institutions looking to invest their capital into the coin, creating wide spread ‘whale’ investors that were holding more than 100 Bitcoins within their account.

During the last 24 hours, BTC has pushed towards yet another all-time high, touching the $30,000 per bitcoin range, as predicted by analysts earlier last month, hitting $29,358 per bitcoin.

As the decentralised currency sees increases interest and adoption, the U.S Treasury have been revealed to have stated that they are looking to be able to increase the power that they have to be able to obtain personal information of any transactions that result in the sending of more than $3,000 worth of bitcoin, with their intentions being seen by a Coinbase chief executive, who has now called for the public to air their concerns and rejections towards to proposed move.

Describing the potential increase of information that the government would be able to obtain from these proposed changes as “a substantial intrusion into your privacy without good reason”, the Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong called for people to share their thoughts with the Treasury directly.

Saying that the Treasury were looking to implement changes that have “not considered the impact it will have” on Coinbase users, as well as other trading platforms, voicing that the lack of consideration was “worrying”.

What the U.S Treasury regulations could mean

The changes that were put forward by the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network back on December 18^th 2020 would mean that exchanges and trading platforms such as Coinbase would have to retain private customer information for any transactions that amounted to more than $3,000.

This information would include the name and address of any user that made any transaction that reached the threshold and that would then have to be surrendered to the government on request.

The regulation changes that were put forward are now subject to a 15-day commenting period, in which the public are able to share their thoughts and objections towards any changes that have been mentioned, which would conclude on January 4^th 2021.

Retaining of information can increase security issues within the market

The cryptocurrency market has gathered a wide range of support thanks to their ability to be able to keep privacy for its users in recent years, however should these new changes that have been proposed successfully be passed, that could increase security risk for those that hold cryptocurrency.

This has previously been an issue, with French-based hardware wallet Ledger suffering a data breach and over 270,000 users having their information published online and some of that information even listed on forums for sale.