Representative Brad Sherman will be introducing a bill in the House aimed at cracking down on United States businesses handling crypto transactions for Russian banks and individuals.
Speaking at a hybrid markup meeting with the House Financial Services Committee on Thursday, Sherman said he will be introducing a companion bill to Senator Elizabeth Warrenâs legislation that would give the Biden administration âexplicit authority to require that crypto exchanges that are subject to U.S. law stop facilitating transactions with Russian-based crypto wallets.â Warren first announced the legislation on March 8, later saying during a Senate Banking Committee hearing she will be introducing the bill on Thursday.
Neither billâs text is available through congressional records at the time of publication. However, Warrenâs proposed legislation would reportedly give the Treasury Department the authority to stop crypto exchanges under U.S. jurisdiction from processing transactions from any crypto addresses belonging to Russian nationals. In addition, U.S. taxpayers would be required to report any crypto transactions outside the country exceeding $10,000 to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN.
â[I] look forward to joining with my colleagues to make sure that one of the tools available to the administration is the ability to tell crypto exchanges if theyâre doing business in the United States, they canât do business with Russia-based crypto wallets until this crisis is over,â said Sherman.
Sherman, who has previously made several anti-crypto statements including calling for a ban on digital assets, cited Ukraineâs Minister of Digital Transformation asking for all exchanges âto block addresses of Russian users,â seemingly without restricting the ban to individuals and businesses named in U.S. and European Union 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.
âWe are not going to unilaterally freeze millions of innocent usersâ accounts,â a Binance spokesperson told Cointelegraph in February. âCrypto is meant to provide greater financial freedom for people across the globe.â
I’m asking all major crypto exchanges to block addresses of Russian users.
It’s crucial to freeze not only the addresses linked to Russian and Belarusian politicians, but also to sabotage ordinary users.
â Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) February 27, 2022
Michael Chobanian, the founder of Ukraineâs Kuna crypto exchange, said on Thursday the platform had stopped âall support for the Russian ruble.â However, his call to crypto exchanges included blocking âany interaction with sanctioned individuals,â seemingly not all wallets held by Russian nationals based in the country or abroad.