Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Angus King (I-Maine) pressed the Biden administration Wednesday for information on how it is addressing Iran's use of cryptocurrency mining to evade sanctions.
“Iran has raised millions of dollars by mining cryptocurrency – a stable source of income that allows the country to buy imported goods, move money at home and abroad, and finance Hamas and other terrorist organizations,” the senators said in a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, of the Treasury Department. Secretary of State Janet Yellen and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.
“This continued activity by the Iranian government threatens our national security,” she added.
Cryptomining, the process of verifying crypto transactions and minting new tokens, has become “increasingly lucrative” for Iran, which is subject to numerous U.S. and international sanctions over its nuclear program, Warren and King said.
Bitcoin mining in particular has funneled more than $186 million into Iranian crypto platforms between 2015 and 2021, and Tehran was one of the top eight Bitcoin-producing countries as of 2021, the pair said in their letter.
Warren and King asked the Biden administration for information on Iran's use of crypto mining, the extent to which crypto has been used to “finance terrorist organizations, military actions or weapons development” and the steps the administration is taking to address the problem.
Warren, one of the most outspoken critics of crypto in Congress, pressed the administration in a letter earlier this week along with Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) on the use of crypto by Russia, Iran and North Korea to circumvent sanctions.
In Monday's letter, Warren and Marshall specifically raised concerns about Russia's use of the stablecoin Tether to obtain weapons for the war against Ukraine, despite U.S. sanctions.
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