US senator 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Republican Senator Roger Marshall has withdrawn his support for the Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act, a controversial anti-crypto bill he co-created with Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren in 2022. 

Marshall withdrew his support as a “cosponsor” of the bill on July 24, leaving 18 senators still supporting the bill, according to the official Congress directory concerning the legislation.

Cointelegraph contacted Senator Marshall’s office but did not receive an immediate response.

Marshall and Warren introduced the DAAMLA bill together in December 2022, with Senator Warren claiming that crypto was being used by “rogue nations, oligarchs, drug lords, and human traffickers [...] to launder billions in stolen funds.”

The bill aims to bring the crypto industry to heel under existing Anti-Money Laundering and counter-terrorism financing frameworks.

Notably, the bill 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.

Warren reintroduced the DAAMLA bill to the US Senate in July 2023. It targets illicit uses of crypto assets for money laundering and financing terrorism.

Several crypto organizations and individuals have lashed the proposed legislation for wildly exaggerating crypto’s role in funding terrorism and illicit activities and warned that it could hamstring the US crypto industry.

On Feb. 20, US-based crypto advocacy group the Chamber of Digital Commerce (CDC) urged the Senate Banking Committee not to consider the DAAMLA bill, saying that it would “erase hundreds of billions of dollars in value for US startups and decimate the savings of countless Americans” who had invested in crypto legally.

On Feb. 13, a group of 80 former military and national security officials from the US government penned a letter warning lawmakers against supporting the DAAMLA bill.

In the letter, the officials warned the legislation would hinder law enforcement and increase national security concerns by “driving the majority of the digital asset industry overseas.”

Senator Warren is running for reelection in 2024 to represent the state of Massachusetts. On Feb. 20, pro-crypto lawyer John Deaton announced he would run as a Republican and attempt to unseat Senator Warren.