Senator Roger Marshall withdraws support for Elizabeth Warren’s anti-crypto bill.
Republican Senator Roger Marshall has withdrawn his support for the Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act, a controversial anti-crypto bill that he co-authored with Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren in 2022.
According to the official Congress directory regarding the legislation, Marshall withdrew his support as a “cosponsor” of the measure on July 24, leaving 18 senators who continued to endorse it.
Senator Marshall’s office did not respond promptly to Cointelegraph’s inquiry.
In December 2022, Marshall and Warren jointly introduced the DAAMLA measure. Senator Warren asserted that “rogue nations, oligarchs, drug lords, and human traffickers […] were using crypto to launder billions in stolen funds.”
The bill seeks to bring the crypto industry to heel under existing Anti-Money Laundering and counter-terrorism financing frameworks.
Notably, the measure declares a swathe of crypto service providers, including decentralized wallet providers, validators, and miners, to be financial institutions, mandating that they be subject to the terms of the Bank Secrecy Act.
In July 2023, Warren reintroduced the DAAMLA measure to the US Senate. It is intended to combat the illicit use of crypto assets for the purposes of money laundering and terrorism financing.
Several crypto organizations and individuals have lashed the proposed legislation for wildly exaggerating crypto’s role in financing terrorism and illicit activities and warned that it could hamstring the US crypto industry.
The Chamber of Digital Commerce (CDC), a US-based crypto advocacy group, urged the Senate Banking Committee not to consider the DAAMLA bill on Feb. 20. The CDC argued that the bill would “erase hundreds of billions of dollars in value for US startups and decimate the savings of countless Americans” who had legally invested in crypto.
A letter was written by a group of 80 former military and national security officials from the United States government on February 13, cautioning legislators against supporting the DAAMLA bill.
The officials in the letter cautioned that the legislation would impede law enforcement and exacerbate national security concerns by “relocating the majority of the digital asset industry overseas.”
In 2024, Senator Warren is seeking reelection to continue serving as the state’s representative. John Deaton, a pro-crypto lawyer, declared his intention to run as a Republican and challenge Senator Warren on February 20.
