With help from Derek Robertson
How are governments supposed to stop crypto from being used to evade the rules?
It’s a growing point of tension as regulators increasingly focus on the technology. One example is the continuing fallout from the Treasury Department’s sanctioning of Tornado Cash, a decentralized protocol that obscures the provenance of crypto tokens. In recent days, there’s news of an arrest of a suspected Tornado Cash developer in the Netherlands and a potential legal challenge to the sanctions in Washington.
But that ongoing hubbub has distracted from another development with implications for crypto compliance: Iran appears to be openly using cryptocurrency to evade U.S. sanctions.
Last week, a state-affiliated media outlet in Iran, citing a tweet from a senior trade official, reported that the country’s government had purchased