Nine congress members have sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Mnuchin requesting an extension of the 15 day comment period on FinCEN’s proposed rulemaking related to “Requirements for Certain Transactions Involving Convertible Virtual Currency or Digital Assets.”

Tom Emmer, Tom Cotton, Bill Foster, David Schweikert, Darren Soto, Warren Davidson, Suzan K. DelBene, Ted Budd, and Tulsi Gabbard are the congress members who shared their concerns.

The letter states the concern that the midnight rulemaking does “not afford the American public a reasonable opportunity to respond” in what is “highly complex rulemaking.”

The members say while they do support the law enforcement in their efforts to combat criminals engaging in money laundering and illicit financing, “it would be impossible for the public to give meaningful comment with so little time.”

Not only a rushed process threatens the legitimacy of this rule but it would make the new regulations susceptible to legal challenges, reads the document.

They asked the department to extend the review period to 60 days and consider an extension of potentially six months to the proposed rule.

Meanwhile, the crypto community can submit their comments before the end of day on Jan. 4 on the government’s site. So far, 3,257 comments have been submitted.

“If we can get enough substantive comments in, they won't have time to consider all of them adequately before Jan 20 and it will be out of Mnuchin's hands,” advised Jerry Brito, executive director of CoinCenter while urging the community to comment no matter what part of the world they live in.

Joe Biden is to be sworn in as the President of the US on Jan. 20 and the Biden admin has announced that they will halt ongoing midnight rulemaking the day they get into office.

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