United States Senator Elizabeth Warren’s crypto Anti-Money Laundering bill has been causing a massive stir in the crypto industry. But some have pointed out that the senator’s bills have a track record of not going anywhere.
According to data from the bill-tracking platform GovTrack, Warren has introduced 330 bills during her 11 years as a senator. Ten were eventually folded into other bills, and only one relatively obscure bill has ever been enacted.
This was the National POW/MIA Flag Act, which requires the prisoner of war/missing in action flag to be displayed alongside the U.S. flag on some federal property.
POW/MIA flag to be required to fly alongside US flag on some buildings if Trump signs the bill on his desk https://t.co/odKY0HffxF pic.twitter.com/vgtlLteOM8
— American Military News (@AmerMilNews) October 24, 2019
“Very few bills are ever enacted — most legislators sponsor only a handful that are signed into law,” GovTrack explained. Most of the time, members of Congress take actions such as putting up legislative amendments and working on committees, which go largely unnoticed by the public.
Reintroduced in July, Warren’s Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act aims to close gaps in the country’s money laundering rules by classifying a range of crypto applications — including noncustodial wallets — and firms as financial institutions regulated under the Bank Secrecy Act.
The same rules should apply to the same kinds of financial transactions with the same kinds of risks. So my new, bipartisan Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act will make the crypto industry follow the same anti-money-laundering standards as banks, brokers, & Western Union.
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) December 29, 2022
So far, the bill has garnered bipartisan support, and a further five senators from Warren’s Democratic Party agreed to co-sponsor the bill on Dec. 11.
Bill would ‘effectively ban’ Bitcoin — Galaxy Research head
Still, those opposed to the bill warn it will choke out crypto in the United States.
Galaxy Research’s head of firmwide research, Alex Thorn, claimed in a Dec. 11 X (formerly Twitter) post that the bill would be “an effective ban” on Bitcoin (BTC) and crypto.
Thorn pointed to clauses in the act that extend Know Your Customer requirements to crypto wallet providers, miners and validators, saying such decentralized software “cannot plausibly perform centralized compliance functions.”
requiring non-custodial open-source software to perform bank-like compliance is *the big attack* bitcoin’s enemies have always threatened. it’s impossible for bitcoin core, for example, to comply with this, so it amounts to an effective ban of bitcoin in the USA.
— Alex Thorn (@intangiblecoins) December 11, 2023
“Warren’s bill would effectively outlaw crypto in America,” Thorn added.
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Neeraj Agrawal, the communications director at crypto think tank Coin Center, posted on X that the bill is a “direct attack on technological progress” and personal privacy.
“While proposed as a solution to potential money laundering and terrorist financing, the bill is in fact a repudiation of liberal values,” Agrawal claimed.
The Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act is a direct attack on technological progress and also a direct attack on our personal privacy and autonomy.
Make no mistake, while proposed as a solution to potential money laundering and terrorist financing, the bill is in fact a… pic.twitter.com/8oID1wECGL
— Neeraj K. Agrawal (@NeerajKA) December 11, 2023
“The bill cannot be improved,” he added. “It can only be opposed in its entirety.”
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