Illicit Crypto Activity Detected By US Treasury Department
War in Ukraine has raged for nearly a month. Cyber offensives have slipped into the digital underground. Economic sanctions have hobbled Moscow. Economists and foreign policy experts have long warned that Russia could resort to blockchain-enabled transactions to either funnel oligarch money or attempt to revive its economy.
Prospects of the latter are limited, officials have said, but now the U.S. Department of the Treasury is reportedly warning that it has detected a rise in the use of digital assets for illicit transactions since Feb. 24 - when the Ukraine invasion began.
Nevertheless, the Treasury official says, the volume is too insignificant to aid Moscow in skirting the United States' designations against Russian banking, its oligarchs and high-ranking officials, and oil exports, among others. Treasury's comments came on Friday from Nellie Liang, undersecretary for domestic finance, who told the news service Reuters that the crypto assets being transferred cannot power an economy and that Russia lacks sufficient infrastructure and rails to effectively - and swiftly - pivot to cryptocurrencies.
