How the Ukraine war jolted the crypto lobby

A few days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Jake Chervinsky, the Blockchain Association’s head of Policy, underlined one of crypto’s big concerns about the war in a tweet.

“Russia can’t and won’t use crypto to evade sanctions,” he wrote. “Concerns about crypto’s use for sanctions evasion are totally unfounded.”

It’s not clear the right people heard his message. The next day, Senate Democrats led by Elizabeth Warren expressed fears in a letter to the Treasury Department that crypto had been used to “hide cross-border transactions for nefarious purposes” and that Vladimir Putin and his allies could use it to evade sanctions.

The crypto industry had already geared up for big battles over regulation this year. But the Ukraine war has led the industry to focus more attention on a new and thorny debate: crypto’s potential role in geopolitical conflict, and how it could be used by authoritarian rulers and their allies to thwart U.S. foreign policy.

Source: https://www.protocol.com/fintech/crypto-lobbying-ukraine