US Treasury to Discuss Crypto Finance Concerns at Congressional Hearing
The United States Treasury is gearing up to address Congress on the emerging challenges posed by cryptocurrencies to existing financial regulatory frameworks.
In his prepared testimony for the House Financial Services Committee, Brian Nelson, Treasury’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, planned to detail the agency’s concerns regarding the use of virtual assets in illicit financial activities.
“Treasury is deeply concerned about the use of virtual assets for all illicit financial activity,” said Nelson. “We have been working for over a decade on implementing an AML/CFT framework for digital assets that mitigates illicit finance risks while promoting responsible innovation.”
According to Nelson, the Terrorism and Financial Intelligence unit have been monitoring the evolving tactics and technologies utilized by unlawful groups to generate and transfer funds.
“While we continue to assess that terrorists’ use of digital assets remains a small fraction of more established mechanisms to move money,” said Nelson. “We recognize that terrorist groups have and may continue to turn to digital assets to raise, transfer, and store their illicit proceeds.”
Nelson demonstrated the unit’s particular emphasis on Hamas-related activities, saying, “Such as our recent multilateral action against several of Hamas’s funds transfer networks that relied on several key exchanges to funnel proceeds to the group.”
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced the Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2023 (DAAMLA), a bill that has stirred significant debate within the crypto community.
