Rep. Brad Sherman will introduce a bill in the House aimed at cracking down on US companies that handle crypto transactions for Russian banks and individuals.
Speaking at a hybrid markup meeting with the House Financial Services Committee on Thursday, Sherman said will introduce a companion bill to Sen. Elizabeth Warren's legislation that would give the Biden administration "explicit authority to require that cryptocurrency exchanges that are subject to US law stop facilitating wallet transactions." of cryptocurrencies based in Russia". warren first Announced legislation on March 8, later saying during a Senate Banking Committee hearing she will introduce the bill on Thursday.
The text of neither bill is available through congressional records at the time of publication. However, Warren's proposed legislation allegedly give The Treasury Department has the authority to prevent cryptocurrency exchanges under US jurisdiction from processing transactions from any cryptocurrency addresses belonging to Russian citizens. In addition, US taxpayers will be required to report any cryptocurrency transactions outside the country that exceed $10,000 to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN.
โ[I] I look forward to joining my colleagues in making sure that one of the tools available to management is the ability to tell cryptocurrency exchanges if they are doing business in the United States, they cannot do business with Russian-based cryptocurrency wallets until this crisis is over,โ Sherman said.
Sherman, who has previously made several statements against cryptocurrencies, including calling for a ban on digital assets, quoted Ukraine's Minister of Digital Transformation. asking for all exchanges "to block addresses of Russian users" apparently without restricting the ban to individuals and companies named in the US and EU sanctions. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said the firm would comply with sanctions but not block transactions connected to all Russian crypto wallets, while Kraken CEO Jesse Powell said there would have to be a legal requirement for the exchange to freeze Russian accounts.
โWe are not going to unilaterally freeze the accounts of millions of innocent users,โ a Binance spokesperson told Cointelegraph in February. "Cryptocurrencies are meant to bring greater financial freedom to people around the world."
I am asking all major crypto exchanges to block addresses of Russian users.
It is crucial to freeze not only addresses linked to Russian and Belarusian politicians, but also to sabotage ordinary users.
โ Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) February 27, 2022
Michael Chobanian, the founder of Ukraine's Kuna crypto exchange, said on Thursday the platform had stopped โall support for the Russian rubleโ. However, his call for cryptocurrency exchanges included blocking โany interaction with sanctioned individualsโ โ apparently not all wallets held by Russian citizens based in the country or abroad.
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