Key Takeaways:
- Elizabeth Warren is working on a bill that uses the war in Ukraine to single out and punish the crypto industry.
- The bill she is working on is Warren Against America Act (WAAA).
- The bill would give POTUS the ability to slap sanctions on foreign crypto exchanges/transaction processors.
According to our sources, Elizabeth Warren is working on a bill that uses the war in Ukraine to single out and punish the crypto industry. The bill she is working on is Warren Against America Act (WAAA). The bill would give POTUS the ability to slap sanctions on foreign crypto exchanges/transaction processors. This would force firms to effectively “sanction” individuals by blocking suspected Russian-linked wallets.
Warren even stated in a tweet on Tuesday that 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.
As per our sources, the bill is just the hook and excuse to shotgun the Biden Administration’s reasonable executive order. Warren didn’t get her way, so now she’s stomping her feet and proposing WAAA. She didn’t stop here there is more FBAR reporting, self-custody transfer record-keeping, FATF coordination, etc.
Our sources further said that Warren is attempting to fast track the FinCEN rule. FinCEN rule would require US taxpayers holding $10k+ of crypto offshore to file FinCEN Forms and report holdings. She also wants FinCEN to revisit the midnight Mnuchin rule that was halted in Jan 2021. That would require banks & crypto exchanges to investigate and report users who transfer crypto to their own private off-exchange wallets. It’s a direct opening attack on self-custody.
She wants the US to coordinate with foreign partners on all these trackings. It’s an affront on privacy and civil liberties, and it’s an authoritarian overreach that must and will be defeated by any means necessary. She is using the horrific crisis in Ukraine to explicitly target crypto exchanges and users because they refused to kowtow to the same extra-judicial pressure as other private tech companies to punish Russian citizens.
Last week, Warren and three other Democratic senators wrote to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, inquiring about the Treasury Department’s plans to impose economic sanctions on the cryptocurrency industry. The Senators wrote that “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”.
