A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the US Senate launched laws geared toward countering cryptocurrency’s function in financing terrorism, explicitly citing the Oct. 7 assault by Hamas on Israel.
In a Dec. 7 announcement, Senators Mitt Romney, Mark Warner, Mike Rounds, and Jack Reed stated they’d launched the Terrorism Financing Prevention Act. The invoice would develop U.S. sanctions to incorporate events funding terrorist organizations with cryptocurrency or fiat. In response to Senator Romney, the laws would enable the U.S. Treasury Division to go after “rising threats involving digital property” within the wake of the Oct. 7 assaults in addition to actions by the terrorist group Hezbollah.
“It’s important that the Division of the Treasury has the mandatory counter-terrorism instruments to fight fashionable threats,” stated Senator Rounds. “The Terrorism Financing Prevention Act takes commonsense steps towards rooting out terrorism by sanctioning international monetary establishments and international digital asset firms that help them in committing these heinous acts.”
Hamas’ assaults on Israel have hastened the necessity for the U.S. to counter the function crypto performs in financing terrorism. Our bipartisan invoice expands sanctions to cowl all terrorist organizations—together with Hamas—and addresses threats involving digital property.https://t.co/MO1AnobhCg
— Senator Mitt Romney (@SenatorRomney) December 7, 2023
The ten-page invoice included provisions permitting the U.S. Treasury to ban transactions with a “international digital asset transaction facilitator” listed as a sanctioned entity. Treasury’s Workplace of Overseas Property Management sanctioned a Gaza-based crypto operator on Oct. 18 and has added North Korean nationals to its checklist for utilizing cryptocurrency mixers to launder funds.
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The senators’ proposed invoice got here as many U.S. lawmakers have been outspoken on crypto’s alleged function in funding terrorist teams. In October, roughly every week after Hamas attacked Israel, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and greater than 100 lawmakers signed a letter calling for motion to “meaningfully curtail illicit crypto exercise” used for funding such organizations.
Warren claimed in a Dec. 6 listening to that North Korea had funded roughly half of its missile program utilizing “proceeds of crypto crime.” Blockchain analytics agency Elliptic reported in October there was “no proof” that Hamas had obtained a major quantity of crypto donations to fund its assaults.
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