Law Enforcement Officials Urge Senate to Advance Digital Asset Clarity Act
Former national security, intelligence, and law enforcement officials urged the Senate to pass the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act ("Clarity Act") arguing it would give investigators and prosecutors stronger tools against illicit finance in crypto markets.
In a letter to Senate leadership, the signatories (organized by the Blockchain Association) said a clear federal framework would bring more activity onshore and improve law enforcement visibility, rather than letting the activity migrate to opaque offshore markets.
The officials highlighted provisions of the Act that:
- extend Bank Secrecy Act ("BSA") anti-money-laundering, sanctions, and customer-due-diligence obligations to digital commodity brokers, dealers, exchanges, and certain trading protocols;
- extend Section 311 special-measures authorities to digital asset activity;
- create a Treasury-led information-sharing pilot and a permanent interagency working group spanning Treasury, the DOJ, DHS, the FBI, the DEA, the IRS, and the Secret Service;
- add anti-fraud safeguards, transaction monitoring, and law enforcement points of contact for digital asset kiosks; and
- modernize seizure and forfeiture authorities by defining digital assets as monetary instruments.
The signatories pushed back on certain criticisms emphasizing that the measures were not deregulatory and that nothing in the bill would limit prosecutors' existing authority to pursue fraud, money laundering, sanctions evasion, terrorism financing, or trafficking.