The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the United States Department of Justice performed an intensive audit of the cryptocurrencies seized by the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) — revealing the dire want for the federal company to revamp its present crypto administration and coverage programs.
OIG’s audit on the seized cryptocurrencies discovered the USMS implementing ample safeguards over its storage and entry. However, the company was discovered to be utilizing spreadsheets to take care of observe of the stock owing to the shortcoming of the present system, Consolidated Asset Tracking System (CATS), for day by day administration of crypto belongings.
As of June 2021, the USMS managed almost 200 DOJ cryptocurrency seizures. We regarded on the USMS’s administration of seized cryptocurrency, and located that the USMS confronted challenges in managing and monitoring cryptocurrency.
— DOJ Inspector General (@JusticeOIG) June 14, 2022
OIG’s audit disclosed the shortage of documented insurance policies and practices associated to the administration of seized crypto belongings — particularly associated to using stock spreadsheets— including:
“Current USMS seized cryptocurrency management policies are inadequate, absent, or in some instances provide conflicting guidance related to asset storage, quantification, valuation, and disposal.”
Having the information about USMS’s intent to outsource the administration of seized cryptocurrencies, the Justice division’s OIG laid down seven suggestions to assist enhance the administration of the identical, beginning with implementing a property administration system ”that logs edit historical past to stop fraudulent alteration of the stock data.”
In addition, the OIG beneficial establishing contemporary insurance policies associated to the right safety and dealing with of the spreadsheets used for monitoring crypto seizures. This contains transferring the information from the spreadsheets into the CATS stock.
Other key suggestions embody introducing a adequate variety of decimal locations to make sure fractional accuracy and implementing insurance policies catering to blockchain forks and bodily management over belongings seized by the USMS, “including pertinent USMS wallet keys.”
The report additionally revealed that USMS concurred with all of the seven suggestions and can be closed upon proof of its whole implementation.
Related: SEC boss worries crypto invoice undermines monetary protections
CoinShares’ weekly Digital Asset Fund Flows report highlighted the off-loading of digital asset merchandise price $101.5 million amid anticipation of “hawkish monetary policy,” stating:
“What has pushed Bitcoin into a ‘crypto winter’ over the last six months can by and large be explained as a direct result of an increasingly hawkish rhetoric from the US Federal Reserve.”
The report additionally highlighted that the full belongings underneath administration for Ether (ETH) funds fell from their peak of $23 billion in November 2021 to $8.7 billion as of June 10, 2022.
