Blockchain Legal Resource

What Happened:

On March 8, 2022, President Biden issued an Executive Order (the “March 8 Executive Order”)¹ prohibiting the importation of Russian-origin oil, liquified natural gas (“LNG”), and coal into the United States and prohibiting US persons from making new investments in Russia’s energy sector.  The March 8 Executive Order also prohibits US persons from providing any approval, financing, facilitation, or guarantee to a foreign person seeking to import Russian-origin oil into the United States or make new investments in Russia’s energy sector.  The March 8 Executive Order follows on a series of significant US sanctions actions against Russia in recent weeks.  The US Department of Justice and Treasury Department also announced additional efforts and guidance intended to emphasize US sanctions efforts and to provide guidance on detecting and preventing efforts by blocked persons to evade sanctions, including through the use of cryptocurrency.  On March 9, 2022, President Biden issued an Executive Order (the “Executive Order on Digital Assets”) directing US government agencies to study and report on cryptocurrencies and other digital assets and consider, among other things, the use of digital assets to circumvent US sanctions.²

On December 10, 2019, FinCEN Director Kenneth Blanco delivered prepared remarks to a banking conference held in Washington, DC. Among topics he discussed were trends in suspicious activity reporting (SARs) since FinCEN published updated guidance on convertible virtual currency (CVC) in May 2019.

On May 9, 2019, FinCEN, the U.S. federal agency charged with combating money laundering, issued two new interpretive documents of interest to the crypto community. The first is interpretive guidance titled “Application of FinCEN’s Regulations to Certain Business Models Involving Convertible Virtual Currencies” (the “Guidance”). The second document is an “Advisory on Illicit Activity Involving Convertible Virtual Currency” (the “Advisory”).