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1/ Today, the US Department of the Treasury, through the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) took the historic step of adding two Bitcoin addresses to its list of sanctioned parties. In this thread, I'll break down what that means.
2/ First, what list? OFAC administers and enforces lists of very high-level bad actors. Quite bad, in fact. They're often Enemies of the State and are added as a tool to exert pressure for diplomatic purposes. Osama Bin Laden, for example, was on the list.
3/ The list typically contains names, categories, other lists include geographical regions. Never, though, has the list included a Bitcoin address. Until today.
4/ This is an important development, but it's not a surprise. OFAC already told us they were going to do this. See here:
5/ So, nobody subject to OFAC's jurisdiction is permitted to engage in any transaction with the persons on the list or associated with the two addresses on the list.
6/ There is plenty of nuance around who is subject to OFAC's jurisdiction, but I'll let the community of budding cryptolawyers dive into that. Suffice it to say that it's not just US nationals, and the term "transaction" is actually pretty broad.
7/ Instead, I want to talk about what this means for Bitcoin policy and regulation more fundamentally. Notice what did not happen here: There was no new legislation. No new rulemaking. No notice and comment. What does this mean?
8/ It means that OFAC believes, today, that it has the tools it needs to enforce the law. It didn't ask for more legislation, nor did it didn't propose new prohibitions. The Treasury is fighting crypto bad guys using the tools already at its disposal.
9/ Maybe Treasury will change its position. Maybe it will need new tools in the future. But for now we're seeing the agency demonstrating its ability to do its job with the laws already on the books. This is good news for Crypto.
10/ You can see the full press release here: home.treasury.gov/news/press-rel…
11/ I know it's going to happen, so, will someone who's got this address on watch be so kind as to at me when trolls start sending BTC there?
