At a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) joined forces with Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) to advocate for their bipartisan legislation to combat money laundering and other illicit financial activities using cryptocurrencies.
What Happened: "Big-time financial criminals love crypto,” Warren said Tuesday.
Last year, more than $1 billion was laundered through cryptocurrency by international drug traffickers, $1.7 billion was stolen by North Korean hackers to fund their nuclear program, and nearly $500 million was collected by ransomware attackers, Warren added.
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"That's why Sen. Roger Marshall and I are reintroducing our anti-money laundering bill to clamp down on crypto crime and give regulators the tools they need to stop the flow of crypto to drug traffickers in places like North Korea and Iran," Warren said.
North Korean hackers possibly stole as much as $1 billion in cryptocurrencies last year, a record-breaking amount for the Hermit Kingdom led by dictator Kim Jong Un, according to a confidential UN report seen by Reuters.
On a June day alone last year, hackers stole $100 million worth of cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum ETH/USD, Wrapped Bitcoin WBTC/USD and Binance Coin BNB/USD from the Horizon Bridge.
The original version of the bill introduced last December would have prohibited banks and other financial institutions from engaging in any transactions with digital asset mixers, designed to conceal transactions made on public blockchains for the purpose of avoiding detection.
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