A provision in the recent spending package from the Senate's intelligence committee targets crypto ties to terrorism and caught many in the industry off-guard, criticizing it as a flawed approach to a worthy goal.
This section of the intelligence funding effort would speed and automate the process to sanction"foreign digital asset transaction facilitators" – including crypto exchanges – that are linked to users who support terrorism groups. The dialogue suggests the matter is still in play as the spending package advances toward wider Senate consideration, potentially within the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act .
The House of Representatives may also be unlikely to embrace this kind of provision that puts the industry in a strict U.S. box soon after the House approved wider crypto market-structure legislation meant to regulate the industry without stifling it. That passage last month of the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act saw, suggesting that crypto regulation could have wide bipartisan support across Congress.