President Donald Trump’s 2021 budget proposal amounts of $4.8 trillion hopes to solidify the Secret Service with the Treasury Department to enhance the investigations into cyber and financial crime.

The Secret Service was established in 1865 as a department within the Treasury charged with protecting the U.S. currency from counterfeiting threats. The Secret Service was moved to the Homeland Security department in 2002 — a change Trump now wants to reverse.

Fighting Crypto Crimes for New Efficiencies

Accordingly, this will “create new efficiencies” in prosecuting financial crimes, which have grown and become extremely difficult to combat, the administration claims:

“Technological advancements in recent decades, such as cryptocurrencies and the increasing interconnectedness of the international financial marketplace, have resulted in more complex criminal organizations and revealed stronger links between financial and electronic crimes and the financing of terrorists and rogue state actors.”

However, the budget proposal discusses cryptocurrencies in a discussion of the position of the Treasury Bureau of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI), which, it states, has in the last two years alone:

“Cut off the flow of billions of dollars to Iran, disrupted networks that provided the brutal Syrian regime with access to oil and financing, and expanded sanctions to punish Russian aggression and corrupt Kremlin-linked oligarchs.”

As per the document, the administration intends to continue investing in economic tools that can support U.S. foreign policy goals and help fight new threats, such as the use of cryptocurrencies in money laundering and terrorist financing.

Furthermore, Trump’s administration envisages that Treasury and Secret Service – alongside the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCeN) – should concentrate on integrating intelligence agencies, financial institutions, and watchdogs to monitor terrorist financing, keep rogue states responsible, and track and prevent financial crimes.

Crypto and Elections

As noted, President Trump was famously scathing against both Bitcoin (BTC) and Libra back in summer 2019 via his favorite medium, Twitter.

FTX, the crypto derivatives exchange, has recently launched “TRUMP,” a new product for futures trading that lets users bet on the re-election of President Trump in 2020.

“So far most of the volume has traded on the offer, implying that traders think Trump is likely to win re-election,” an FTX representative said.

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