Senator Warren seizes on fears over crypto and sanctions with new bill
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren is preparing a bill to crack down on the use of crypto as a way to avoid economic sanctions.
Warren’s latest anti-crypto move comes alongside a push from the U.S. government to stamp out the possibility of Russia using crypto to skirt a host of economic sanctions placed on the nation.
According to a March. 8 report from NBC News, one of the provisions of Warren’s new crypto bill — which is still in draft form — will require local crypto exchanges to submit “detailed records” to the Treasury Department of customers' identities and transfers to private crypto wallets.
It also aims to “force companies to choose between doing business in the U.S. or with sanctioned people and entities by threatening secondary sanctions on foreign crypto exchanges.”
The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is also working towards drafting similar requirements based on Warren’s bill according to NBC.
Ukraine's deputy minister of digital transformation Alex Bornyakov has been calling for crypto exchanges to ban Russian users for the past week or so, however top crypto exchanges such as Binance, Coinbase and Kraken have all said they won't implement a blanket ban but have emphasizing their commitment to being compliant with U.S. sanctions.
Senator Warren has been highly skeptical of the sector for quite some time now, and in 2021 alone she labeled DeFi as the “most dangerous” part of crypto, introduced a bill to study crypto’s role in ransomware and slammed the Ethereum network for its high fees during a committee hearing. So it's little surprise to industry observers she has seized the opportunity to push for tougher regulations.
Warren, who was among a group of Senators to write to
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