Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced new legislation targeting Russians who use crypto. The US bans crypto for Russians. Or, at least, intends to do so.
Warren announced the Digital Asset Sanctions4Compliance Enhancement Act on March 17. “The crypto industry claims that Russians can’t use crypto to hide their wealth”, she said.
The bill requires the White House to make up a report on all crypto platforms that have any affiliation with Russia. The new legislation also gives more authority to the Treasury for banning crypto services, that still process transactions with Russia-associated addresses.
Warren proposes to establish a broad definition for so-called “digital asset transaction facilitators”.
Such facilitators will be defined as “any person, or group of persons, that significantly and materially facilitates the purchase, sale etc.”
Can Russians avoid sanctions with crypto?
SO, The US bans crypto for Russians. Will it actually work?
Earlier Coinbase banned 25 000 Russian crypto wallets because of the war that Russia started against Ukraine.
Russians are trying to hide their money in crypto because of the Western sanctions. After the currency operations ban in Russia locals began massively using crypto to withdraw their money abroad.
For instance, many wealthy Russians withdraw money from the country through Dubai crypto exchanges. Other are using popular crypto trading platforms, which still refuse to block Russian accounts.
It is not clear yet, how exactly will the new legislation proposed by Senator Warren help fight Russians willing to mitigate the sanctions.
Many experts say it is almost impossible to ban Russians from using crypto.
For two prominent reasons, at least.
Firstly, ban of this kind is widely considered as a violation of the very spirit of cryptocurrency. Which is, beyond any doubt, freedom and absence of censorship.
Secondly, it is almost impossible to identify the nationality of users on most of the exchanges. Only some of them are using KYC registration that requires photo ID and real addresses of the users. Other require only phone number or email. It is definitely not a problem to obtain a phone number of a different country nowadays.
Sources: The Block
