Regulation to date has been minimal, but history tells us that governments rarely preference light regulation – it just takes them a while to catch up with technology. There are a large number of issues that any government could regulate when it comes to cryptocurrency use among the public. In 2013, the U.S. Senate held the first hearings on Bitcoin. In that same year, FinCEN released the first announcement by any government agency related to the technology. The IRS was also the first tax agency in the world to clarify the tax treatment of Bitcoin and other digital currencies. Additionally, BitLicense in New York was the first licensing regime in the world directed at digital currencies.