Good day everybody,
Welcome to CryptoGod-1's blog on all things crypto. In this post I will be looking at how Elizabeth Warren is once again in the news for complaining about crypto and its ties to North Korea.
Senator Elizabeth Warren
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has once again criticised the use of cryptocurrencies by North Korea along with the rise of crypto “pig butchering” scams. This was noted on Thursday the 21st of March 2024 at a hearing of the Senate of Armed Services. Senator Warren used the opportunity to note her opinion that cryptocurrencies as a whole poses “a threat to our national security.”
Senator Warren questioned Admiral John C. Aquilino of the United States Indo-Pacific Command where she claimed that North Korea could pay for over 56 intercontinental ballistic missiles with the $1.7 billion worth of crypto the country stole in 2022. She went on to ask if the figure surprised Aquilino and he confessed it did not.
It has long been recognised that North Korea makes use of malicious groups and crypto malware as part of its State sponsored hacking. The collective group is known as the Lazarus Group and the crypto mixer Sinbad was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in November 2023 for illicit activities, including those related to the Lazarus Group.
Warren noted that "crypto is helping rouge states. terrorists." She also stated that crypto is helping criminal organisations to fund their operations on a scale which has not been witness previously.
Countering Senator Warren's claims are blockchain intelligence firm Chainalysis. Their 2024 Crypto Crime Report found that funds sent to crypto mixers from illicit addresses decreased by nearly half a billion dollars last year “likely due to law enforcement and regulatory efforts.”
Warren has long been critical of cryptocurrencies, and she did not stop with North Korea. In her testimony on Thursday, the senator claimed that “more than 40,000 people in the United States lost more than $3.5 billion dollars in pig butchering crypto scams that we know of” in last year alone.
These “pig butchering” scams are common across Southeast Asia, and they involve perpetrators exploiting a victim’s trust in order to increase the amount of funds a given victim will send to them. Warren also noted:
“Now, pig butchering is just one scam. There are many more. A recent study found that these criminal gangs have stolen and laundered more than $75 billion dollars in crypto in just the last four years.”
While Senator Elizabeth Warren criticises crypto she has also painted a picture of the far-reaching consequences of crypto-related crimes, at least from her perspective. She also used the hearing to push her bipartisan bill known as the Digital Assets Anti-Money Laundering Act (DAAMLA). This bill aims to close the loopholes in anti-terrorist funding while subjecting key players in the digital asset industry to tougher regulations. Senator Warren noted:
“I’ve got a bipartisan bill, Republicans and Democrats, with 20 senators that would put a stop to it. I think it is time to pass this bill.”
Have a great day.
Peace. CryptoGod-1.
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