Janet Yellen, the former Fed leader named by Joe Biden as Treasury secretary, remains skeptical of digital currencies as a threat to illicit financing.
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At a virtual hearing of the US Senate Finance Committee held on Tuesday, Yellen faced questions about Counterterrorism Financing (CFT) from Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire .
Maggie asked Yellen how she would respond as Treasury Secretary to emerging financial technology used to finance criminal organizations and terrorists.
The Democratic senator described digital currencies as a growing concern and asked Biden how it would deal with counterterrorism financing.
Yellen said: We need to make sure that our methods of dealing with these matters - with terrorist financing - change as technology changes.
She added: Cryptocurrencies are of particular concern. And I think at least many of them are used from a transactional perspective mainly for illicit financing and I think we really need to study the ways in which we can reduce their use and make sure that anti-money laundering does not happen through those channels.
Yellen, the former chair of the Federal Reserve under US President Barack Obama, has been somewhat quiet about her views on the cryptocurrency space since she described Bitcoin as anything but Helpful in October 2018.
Yellen left her position as chair of the Federal Reserve in early 2018 after the 2017 rally that pushed Bitcoin to an all-time high.
If approved by the Senate, Yellen would be the first woman to serve as Treasury Secretary, replacing Steve Mnuchin.
