FDIC And Congress Members Address Crypto Representations, Sanctions, Mining

Last week the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) announced that it had issued cease and desist letters to five blockchain-related companies, demanding that the companies "cease and desist from making false and misleading statements about FDIC deposit insurance" and instructing the companies to "take immediate corrective action." The FDIC alleged that each company made false and misleading statements indicating that certain cryptocurrency products or accounts were FDIC insured, with one company alleged to have registered a domain name suggesting affiliation with the FDIC.

This week, U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer published a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen asking for clarification on the Office of Foreign Assets Control's (OFAC) recent sanctions against the cryptocurrency mixing service Tornado Cash. Emmer described the sanctions as the "first of their kind" in that OFAC sanctioned the protocol's smart contracts rather than a natural person or entity. In