U.S. Treasury Official: Illicit Cryptocurrency Financing Up Slightly, But Volumes Ae Small

U.S. officials have observed an increase in the use of digital assets to facilitate illicit finance since Russia invaded Ukraine, but the volume is too small to play a significant role in helping Moscow evade sweeping sanctions, said the U.S. Treasury Department’s deputy for domestic finance. Minister Nellie Liang said the current state of digital assets is insufficient to support the economy and the ecosystem is too underdeveloped for individuals to effectively use such assets to evade sanctions.

The deals we've seen are fairly small, of course, we admit that we may not see everything, but there's a fair amount of oversight. At this point, we just don't think it can be used to evade sanctions on a large scale.

The Ministry of Finance has been studying the issue for years, and the G7 and other countries have also expressed concerns about the use of digital assets for illicit finance, so effective enforcement is imperative, Liang said.