Financial Technology Protection Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. BUDD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Colorado for yielding. I also want to thank Chairman Hensarling for his dedicated leadership of his committee. I appreciate all he did to bring my legislation, H.R. 5036, to the floor. I also want to thank the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Lynch), my co-lead on the bill, for his efforts, his experience, and his knowledge. It only made the bill better, so I appreciated working with him.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of my bipartisan legislation, the Financial Technology Protection Act.

We all know that illicit financing networks are the lynchpin of any terrorist group's, criminal organization's, or rogue state's operations. As we move into an increasingly digital world, criminals and terrorists will start to use these new technologies that are available to them. That presents a problem.

That problem is that we know that criminals use digital currencies through dark net markets to criminalize and to monetize cyber attacks. There is documented evidence that terrorists are increasingly using these currencies.

The RAND Corporation has some good supporting evidence on this. The bottom line is that the Federal Government has to be one step ahead of the illicit actors in this new space without threatening technological innovation, and that is what H.R. 5036 will do.

Specifically, my legislation will do the following things to help make sure the United States stays ahead of this problem: First, it establishes the Independent Financial Technology Task Force to Combat Terrorism and Illicit Financing, whose goal is to improve coordination between private and public sectors on digital currency terror strategy and to combat illicit use. From my perspective, industry and the Federal Government should be coming together to find best practices and solutions to stop this new terrorist funding threat.

Secondly, H.R. 5036 includes language from H.R. 5227, the Preventing Rogue and Foreign Actors From Evading Sanctions Act, which was introduced by my friend Mark Meadows of North Carolina. This language directs the Treasury Department to develop a strategy that identifies and describes the potential uses of virtual currencies and other emerging technologies by states, nonstate actors, and terrorist organizations to evade sanctions, finance terrorism, or launder monetary instruments and threaten the United States' national security.

Again, the development of a national strategy to combat illicit use strikes me as common sense; therefore, we are excited to have it included in the bill and to have Mr. Meadows' support as well.

Also, the Budd-Lynch legislation establishes a targeted rewards program for information leading to the capture of terrorists or illicit actors involved with terror digital currency networks. The government should be encouraging individuals with knowledge of illicit use of virtual currencies to come forward through the offerings of rewards for successful convictions.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, H.R. 5036 establishes the Fintech Leadership in Innovation and Financial Intelligence Program, which will be used for grants and rewards in the Fintech space for ideas and programs to combat terrorist use of digital currencies.

These technologies would be open access and open source. Experts in the private sector can track illicit use of these currencies and perhaps do a better job of leveraging their talent to create tools and programs through the Fintech Leadership and Financial Intelligence Program. We need to give them the ability to try, and that is what this bill does.

Here is the bottom line, Mr. Speaker. H.R. 5036 is legislation that sparks private-sector innovation to deal with terror and illicit financing when it comes to virtual currencies. I think that Congress should be promoting programs and technologies that give industry the tools they need to save their technology and industry from illicit use and, hopefully, save them from further regulation down the road.

Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption of the bill.

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