U.S. Treasury Undersecretary Wally Adeyemo has asked Congress to expand the agency’s tools and resources to go after wrongdoers in the cryptocurrency space. Terrorist groups, including Hamas, are using new virtual methods to move and store funds and to obfuscate financial flows. These could be cryptocurrency services and mixers,” the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement.
Adeyemo asked Congress to give the Treasury Department a “new secondary sanctions tool” against exchanges that support terrorism. The government would then be able to apply to virtual asset service providers (VASPs) the measures applicable to correspondent bank accounts. Adeyemo believes we need to create a new category of financial institutions under the BSA, which would include cryptocurrency exchanges, crypto wallets, node validators, decentralized finance projects (DeFi) and other VASPs.
Adeyemo recently accused cryptocurrency companies of being unwilling to assist authorities in combating terrorist financing and money laundering through digital assets. The official warned that if industry companies don’t take action themselves, U.S. authorities will do it for them.