Democratic United States Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is one of the most influential politicians, launched her re-election campaign yesterday, focusing on the “building of an anti-crypto army”. Although Warren’s hostile efforts against Bitcoin and crypto are nothing new, the choice of words as well as the central role in particular is frightening.
In her latest Twitter post, she calls on her followers to join the campaign and praises her plans as well as past achievements. The accomplishments include providing over-the-counter hearing aids and lowering the cost of child care in the state of Massachusetts – but also the formation of the “anti-crypto army.”
I’m in this fight to put our government on the side of working families. Join our re-election campaign today: https://t.co/KuZwvrwkqT pic.twitter.com/fCUcqE9PZM
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) March 29, 2023
With this, Warren is referring to a February 2023 Politico article, which stated that “the progressive Democrat” is starting to recruit conservative Republicans in the Senate to her anti-crypto movement, and is uniting “progressives and conservatives, watchdog groups and bankers, who share common cause in wanting to derail the unfettered growth of crypto.”
Warren’s efforts to harm the industry culminated in the introduction of the Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2022 in December, although the bill was opposed by both Republicans and other Democrats.
In February, Warren promised to reintroduce the bill this year. The pretext, as in the re-election campaign: Elizabeth Warren wants to protect the “most vulnerable people” from digital assets.
Because of this, she plans to widely implement anti-money laundering (AML) policies, even for DeFi platforms and self-hosted wallets. In addition, Warren wants to ban the use of mixers.
Coin Center, a leading non-profit focused on the policy issues facing cryptocurrencies, called the act “an opportunistic, unconstitutional assault on self custody, developers, and node operators.” Jerry Brito, executive director of Coin Center added that this “is the most direct attack on the personal freedom and privacy of cryptocurrency users and developers we’ve yet seen.”
More explosively, in January 2023, it was revealed by the Heritage Foundation that Warren is apparently working with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chief Gary Gensler to execute operation Choke Point 2.0.
The organization revealed that Warren sent the questions and answers to the SEC chairman before his hearing before Congress in January and even asked if he agreed with the wording.
: What was @SenWarren's staff doing coordinating questions & testimony with officials from the Securities and Exchange Commission before their leader testified before Warren's committee in 2021? @jasoninthehouse breaks down the emails the Oversight Project just uncovered: pic.twitter.com/swFomkew8x
— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) January 27, 2023
Besides that, the threat of a backdoor ban on private cryptocurrency transactions is currently seen by some experts as a result of the RESTRICT act. Messari CEO Ryan Selkis today retweeted an assessment by J.W. Verret, an associate professor at the George Mason Law School.
The latter wrote via Twitter that “this bill can and will be used to ban crypto privacy tools and any other privacy tools. Congressman Tom Emmer, we need your help on this.”
At press time, the Bitcoin price continued to flourish on the new macroeconomic environment and brewing banking crisis, trading at $28,577.
This full article can be read on Bitcoinist here: https://bitcoinist.com/senator-warren-touts-building-anti-crypto-army/