US Senator Warren Drafting Bill to Ensure Crypto Can’t Be Used to Evade Sanctions

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is preparing a bill to make it more difficult to use cryptocurrency to circumvent sanctions.

In a tweet on Tuesday, Warren says her new bill will “ensure crypto isn’t used by Putin and his cronies to undermine our economic sanctions,” referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
According to NBC News, which was the first to report on Warren's proposed bill, one of its provisions would make it easier to verify customer identities and transfers to private wallets by requiring financial institutions to log detailed records and submit reports to the Treasury Department.
Warren and three other Democratic senators sent a letter last week to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen asking about how the Treasury Department plans to enforce economic sanctions within the cryptocurrency industry.
“Strong enforcement of sanctions compliance in the cryptocurrency industry is critical given that digital assets, which allow entities to bypass the traditional financial system, may increasingly be used as a tool for sanctions evasion,” the senators wrote.

UPDATE (March 9, 1:03 UTC): Adds context in third bullet point.

UPDATE (March 9, 17:10 UTC): Removes reference to the Republican party controlling the U.S. Senate. Currently, the Democrats control the Senate.

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Nelson Wang

Nelson Wang is CoinDesk's news editor for the East Coast. He holds BTC and ETH above CoinDesk's disclosure threshold of $1,000.

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