State Financial Crime and Cryptocurrencies

• In Event: The Crimes of Digital Capitalism

Abstract

This article examines the concept of state financial crime in the context of cryptocurrency adoption, highlighting how state decisions and omissions in financial governance produce systemic harm. Moving beyond conventional analyses of state failures, it interrogates how governments actively construct legal and regulatory frameworks that facilitate financial misconduct and economic exploitation. Through case studies of Argentina, El Salvador, and the United States, the article explores how the administrations of Milei, Bukele, and Trump have embraced cryptocurrency as part of a broader neoliberal and autocratic restructuring of the state—one marked by deregulation, unpredictability, and a disregard for democratic-liberal norms and international law. The analysis considers how these administrations have used cryptocurrency policies to advance the interests of ruling elites, bypass regulatory oversight, and create conditions conducive to financial fraud and victimization. It situates the push for digital financial deregulation within a broader fiscal and monetary strategy that prioritizes elite accumulation over economic stability. By examining Argentina’s recent cryptocurrency scams, Trump’s executive orders on digital assets and the establishment of a crypto reserve, and El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment, this article critically assesses how state financial crime manifests in the digital financial sphere, perpetuating capitalist exploitation, insecurity and harm.

Author

• Jose Atiles, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign