Crypto News: US Congress Gambles on Zero-Budget Task Force After Americans Hemorrhaged $10B to Scams

Key Insights:

• US Senator Jerry Moran introduced the SAFE Crypto Act on Dec. 12, creating crypto news about establishing a Treasury-led task force.
• The bill pulled together federal agencies, industry representatives, and victim advocates to coordinate responses to grooming scams, Ponzi schemes, and rug pulls.
• Legal experts warned the proposal could replicate the UK’s failed Action Fraud model or expand surveillance, while others saw potential for better victim protection.

US Senator Jerry Moran made crypto news by introducing legislation that aimed to create a federal task force dedicated to combating crypto scams.

The Strengthening Agency Frameworks for Enforcement of Cryptocurrency Act, or SAFE Crypto Act, tasked the Treasury Secretary with establishing the Task Force for Recognizing and Averting Cryptocurrency Scams within 180 days.

The development came as digital asset theft surged past $3.6 billion in the first three quarters of 2025, according to Hacken’s 2025 TRUST Report.

Access-control exploits accounted for nearly 58% of losses, while phishing captured 21%. North Korean threat actors linked to 56% of stolen funds.

In a broader timeframe, US authorities estimated Americans lost around $10 billion to crypto investment scams in 2024, according to a DeepStrike report from November. As per the crypto news, pig-butchering and romance-investment schemes drove much of that total.

What the Crypto News Bill Actually Creates?

The SAFE Crypto Act established a coordinating body chaired by the Treasury Secretary.

Additionally, membership included the Attorney General, FinCEN Director, Secret Service Director, and representatives from stablecoin issuers, exchanges, custodians, blockchain intelligence firms, victim-support networks, and state regulators.

The task force receives no dedicated budget or new investigative powers, and its members serve without compensation beyond their existing government salaries.

The group must meet at least three times in the first year and submit an initial report within 12 months. The bill also mandates annual updates, and the task force expires three years after the first report.

Bill Hughes, lawyer at Consensys, said on Dec. 17 that task forces “give guidance, support, and top cover to the larger federal and state law enforcement contingent.” He noted they “rarely have operations unto themselves.”

Hughes questioned the membership structure:

“The Dir. USSS reports to the Sec. of DHS, who isn’t on the TF. The Attorney General technically is the boss of the Dir. FBI, but the latter isn’t on this. IRS-CI and HSI are arguably more involved in crypto fraud investigations than USSS but they aren’t included.”

The bill directed the task force to evaluate FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center data, assess international anti-scam approaches, determine education strategies, coordinate efforts to pursue perpetrators, and work with stablecoin issuers on freeze-and-seizure capabilities.

The document explicitly encouraged “public-private, real-time information sharing and interdiction networks” to block funds linked to scams.

Gabriel Shapiro, crypto lawyer and MetaLeX founder, called the proposal “very useful.” He noted the SEC and CFTC were “not really focused on things like hacks, phishing, petty ponzi schemes.”

Meanwhile, security lead at MetaMask, Taylor Monahan, warned that the design risked copying the UK’s Action Fraud model:

“If you’re defrauded in the UK, literally RIP. Every other LE across all the UK will just send you to Action Fraud. And then nothing happens.”

Monahan’s concern was that centralized intake became “an excuse to not do anything for all those victims.”

In the list of what could go wrong if the bill passes is the fact that, if every crypto fraud case were routed to a task force portal without investigation capacity, victims would receive “no further action” letters while agencies claimed they “did something.”

A second risk involved definitional creep. The bill listed “financial grooming scams,” “fraudulent Initial Coin Offerings,” and “rug pulls” as targets, but never tied “scam” to specific criminal statutes.

Monahan asked, “what is a scammer?”

Shapiro replied that “a scammer for this purpose will be whatever this committee considers to be a scammer.” He added that most people “know something scammy in crypto when we see it,” pointing to the type of rugs ZachXBT documented.

The bill’s membership hard-coded seats for bank-regulated stablecoin issuers, exchanges, custodians, and blockchain intelligence providers.

At the same time, there is no guaranteed representation for open-source wallet developers, DeFi protocol governance, privacy advocates, or small remittance players.

The proposal also pushed stablecoin issuers to “maintain and use technical capabilities to freeze, seize, burn, or reissue digital assets” tied to scams. Without clear evidentiary standards or off-ramp procedures, these formalized blocklist regimes.

Wrong-door hits could strand legitimate users’ funds while agencies investigate.

Industry Split on Whether Bill Helps or Harms

Hughes concluded that the task force was “worthy of support,” but noted, “I’m not seeing much, if anything, in this bill that the Executive Branch really can’t do on its own.”

He added that the big change would come “if Congress threw a bunch of money at fixing the problem.”

Shapiro saw upside potential. He wrote:

“The status quo for enforcing against petty fraud related to crypto in the U.S. is so bad right now that I would guess this at least has a chance of being better.”

In the optimistic version, the task force coordinated fragmented enforcement, gave local law enforcement clear playbooks and chain-analysis tools, and made life harder for obvious rug-pullers and pig-butchering rings.

The bill required the task force to harmonize data collection, estimate the number of affected consumers, and evaluate the effectiveness of anti-scam training. That provided Congress with consistent baselines instead of dueling statistics.

Besides, victim representation in the group could push for faster notification protocols and clearer restitution processes.

The proposal also asked whether “additional Federal legislation and full-time equivalents would be beneficial” for law enforcement. That gave agencies a ready excuse to defer real changes, like funding more cybercrime investigators or clarifying SEC-CFTC jurisdiction.

Senator Elissa Slotkin co-sponsored the bill to protect seniors and demonstrate that the US could police digital-asset crime while supporting innovation. TRM’s Ari Redbord backed the legislation, seeing a chance to channel political pressure into targeted action against fraud networks.

Hughes summarized the calculus by saying “it’s essential that government and industry better coordinate and share information more freely and promptly.”

The task force creates a structure for that coordination. Whether it delivers results or becomes another complaints sink depended on resourcing, transparency, and how narrowly the group defined “scammer.”