Now, FinCEN Director Andrea Gacki confirmed that the Treasury is working on finalizing the so-called mixer rule, which uses the PATRIOT Act to prohibit private transactions in cryptocurrency. At the same time, Representative Nunn of Iowa let slip that the House appears to continue to work on the Special Measures to Fight Modern Threats Act, a PATRIOT Act digital asset legislation that's long been thought dead, which would solidify the Treasury's use of Section 311 to prohibit specific transactions.
The mixer rule is the one that proposed marking "single use addresses" as "a primary money laundering concern."
Gacki told Castens that FinCEN has been using authorities under the PATRIOT Act's Section 311 to go after specific groups in the digital assets sector. Gacki told the Representative that she was very proud of Section 311 and the powerful authority it grants the Government. Prohibiting specific transactions would be a way to modernize his authority, Gacki stated, to which Castens responded that "Mr. Himes has been active on the 311 authority – let's talk offline and see how we might tweak that and improve it."