Representative Brad Sherman wants to introduce a bill in the House that could make US businesses dealing with crypto transactions to cut ties with Russian banks and individuals.
Thursday, during a meeting with the House Financial Services Committee, Sherman revealed he wants to introduce a companion bill to that of Senator Elizabeth Warren which would offer the US “explicit authority to require that crypto exchanges that are subject to U.S. law stop facilitating transactions with Russian-based crypto wallets.”
Warren first confirmed the legislation ten days ago, on March 8th.
The text of neither bill is available for now but, from what was declared, the proposed legislation of Warren would offer the Treasury Department the power to stop crypto exchanges that are under American jurisdiction from dealing with crypto addresses that belong to Russian nationals.
Furthermore, Americans that make international crypto transactions that surpass $10,000 in value would have to report them to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
Sherman stated:
“[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 they’re doing business in the United States, they can’t do business with Russia-based crypto wallets until this crisis is over.”
Sherman echoed the sentiments of Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation who asked exchanges “to block addresses of Russian users.” CZ, the CEO of Binance, declared that his exchange will follow the Western sanctions but it won’t block transactions that have connections to all Russian crypto wallets. Similarly, Jesse Powell, the CEO of Kraken, stated that in order for the exchange to freeze Russian accounts, it would have to be legally asked to do so.
In February, a spokesperson for Binance declared:
“We are not going to unilaterally freeze millions of innocent users’ accounts. Crypto is meant to provide greater financial freedom for people across the globe.”