The Department of Justice has announced the formation of a team dedicated to cryptocurrency enforcement.

Cryptocurrencies are taking the world by storm, offering a decentralized, mostly anonymous form of finance. With few exceptions, governments around the world are struggling to strike a balance between supporting a technical innovation and figuring out how to regulate it.

The DOJ is preparing to take a more active role, forming a team that will “tackle complex investigations and prosecutions of criminal misuses of cryptocurrency, particularly crimes committed by virtual currency exchanges, mixing and tumbling services, and money laundering infrastructure actors.”

Dubbed the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET), the team will bring in expertise from the DOJ Criminal Division’s Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section (MLARS), as well as Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) and other divisions.

“Today we are launching the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team to draw on the Department’s cyber and money laundering expertise to strengthen our capacity to dismantle the financial entities that enable criminal actors to flourish — and quite frankly to profit — from abusing cryptocurrency platforms” said Deputy Attorney General Monaco. “As the technology advances, so too must the Department evolve with it so that we’re poised to root out abuse on these platforms and ensure user confidence in these systems.”

“The Criminal Division is already an established leader in investigating and prosecuting the criminal misuse of cryptocurrency,” said Assistant Attorney General Polite. “The creation of this team will build on this leadership by combining and coordinating expertise across the Division in this continuously evolving field to investigate and prosecute the fraudulent misuse, illegal laundering, and other criminal activities involving cryptocurrencies.”