Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) leaves the weekly Senate Democratic coverage luncheon on Wednesday, Might 1, 2024.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Angus King (I-Maine) pressed the Biden administration for data Wednesday on how it’s addressing Iran’s use of cryptocurrency mining to evade sanctions. 

“Iran has raised millions of dollars through mining crypto—a steady revenue source that allows it to purchase imports, move funds domestically and internationally, and fund Hamas and other terrorist organizations,” the senators stated in a letter to Protection Secretary Lloyd Austin, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and nationwide safety adviser Jake Sullivan. 

“This ongoing activity by the Iranian government threatens our national security,” they added. 

Crypto mining, the method of verifying crypto transactions and minting new tokens, has turn into “increasingly lucrative” for Iran, which is topic to quite a few U.S. and worldwide sanctions over its nuclear program, Warren and King stated.

Bitcoin mining, particularly, funneled greater than $186 million onto Iranian crypto platforms between 2015 and 2021, and Tehran was one of many prime eight Bitcoin producing international locations as of 2021, the pair famous of their letter.

Warren and King requested the Biden administration for details about Iran’s use of crypto mining, the extent to which crypto has been used to “fund terrorist organizations, military actions, or weapons development,” and steps the administration is taking to deal with the difficulty. 

Warren, one in every of crypto’s most outspoken critics in Congress, equally pressed the administration about Russia, Iran and North Korea’s use of crypto to evade sanctions in a letter alongside Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) earlier this week.

Within the Monday letter, Warren and Marshall particularly raised considerations about Russia’s use of the stablecoin Tether to acquire arms for its struggle in opposition to Ukraine regardless of U.S. sanctions.