Scott Melker, also known as the “Wolf of All Streets,” shared his concerns regarding the U.S. government coming after bitcoin in a post on social media platform X Thursday. His warning followed a series of attacks by the U.S. government on other cryptocurrencies. Melker is a well-known trader, investor, writer, and host of the Wolf of All Streets podcast. In 2020, he won the Binance Influencer of the Year Award for North America.
Voicing his concerns, he cautioned:
Many bitcoiners celebrated the attacks on crypto from the US government, somehow not realizing that the same attacks would eventually come for bitcoin, regardless of it being a commodity.
He stressed that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) “have all attacked self custody in the past few weeks.”
Last week, the FBI issued a warning about using unregistered cryptocurrency money transmitting services that fail to comply with U.S. anti-money laundering laws. This FBI warning came one day after the DOJ charged operators of Samourai Wallet, calling it “an unlicensed money transmitting business that executed over $2 billion in unlawful transactions and laundered over $100 million in criminal proceeds.” This week, the DOJ charged early bitcoin investor Roger Ver with “mail fraud, tax evasion, and filing false tax returns.” Meanwhile, the SEC, led by Chair Gary Gensler, has been going after several cryptocurrencies, claiming that they could be securities, including ethereum. Gensler has stated that most crypto tokens, except bitcoin, are securities.
In addition, the IRS has issued a draft of tax Form 1099-DA, which mandates that brokers, including those offering unhosted wallets, report proceeds from digital asset transactions. A cryptocurrency tax specialist has raised concerns that gathering specific data points, like wallet addresses, could lead to significant privacy and security issues.
Melker believes that the U.S. government prefers Americans to invest in regulated offerings. In early January, the SEC approved 11 spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), including one from Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager. Initially, these U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs saw substantial inflows, though they have recently reported consecutive days of outflows for the first time. The Wolf of All Streets host added in a follow-up post:
It is becoming clear. If you want to ‘own bitcoin’ in the U.S., the government will want it to be in the form of a Blackrock ETF.
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