Cryptocurrency has become mainstream, and yet, we haven’t even begun to see its far-reaching potential in the U.S. In countries like Sweden and China, cash is fast becoming obsolete, and countries that include Ecuador, Uruguay, and the Bahamas have rolled out central bank digital currencies, according to Eswar Prasad’s excellent book, The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies. Now, the U.S. is exploring a similar path with President Biden recently signing an executive order for the government to respond to cryptocurrency’s growth and discuss the creation of a digital dollar.
This is an exciting time in the world of digital currency – and it’s a time when the U.S. government needs to consider how its regulations will impact consumer protection, financial stability, and national security. At this time, it is critical for financial institutions and the government alike to turn to customer complaints about virtual currency in order to understand growing risks, like fraud and scams.
In fact, in a recent American Banker article by Claire Williams, Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Rostin Behnam “argued for his agency to play a vigorous role in tracking down fraud and manipulation in cryptocurrency markets.”
The PositivityTech® intelligent platform is critical to exploring the future of digital currency, (1) alerting financial institutions to fraud and scams, (2) highlighting virtual currency’s other growing and repeated challenges, and (3) ensuring financial inclusion with equitable distribution to populations who are banked and unbanked.
What are the major issues with virtual currency?
PositivityTech turns customer complaints and narratives into data, showcasing challenges and risks based on their language, severity, bias, and other scores and models. In the visuals below, you can see that while overall complaints about virtual currency are leveling off, customer complaints about fraud and scams are increasing. This is the exact problem that Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Rostin Behnam highlighted above.
Which financial institutions currently receive the most complaints about virtual currency, and fraud and scams?
With these visuals based on intelligence from PositivityTech, you can see that the companies that faced the most complaints about virtual currency, as well as fraud or scams which relate to virtual currency are continuously changing. The companies with the most complaints just last year are different from those in the last 90 days. These insights from PositivityTech provide vital information for financial institutions that want to meet customer needs and get ahead of the competition.
Private sector collaboration is part of the solution
From a technical and servicing standpoint, virtual currency will continue to improve. Yet, it is crucial that institutions tackle these issues of fraud and scam. This is an opportunity for private sector companies, such as banks and cyber specialists, and the government to collaborate in order to deeply understand and address customers’ friction points. With private sector companies’ input, regulatory solutions will become stronger and lead to greater consumer protection, financial stability, and national security.
PositivityTech is critical to this work, highlighting the major challenges and the financial institutions that can be part of the solution.
Today, the U.S. has the opportunity to be a global leader in digital currency — and customer input is key. As Prasad shares in his conclusion, “Technology, after all, is no match for human nature.”
