Some United States senators are ramping up the anti-crypto rhetoric again, urging federal companies to do so towards the illicit use of virtual assets.

Senator Maggie Hassan is the trendy to elevate worries approximately the usage of cryptocurrency as a method of charge for ransomware attacks.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee member despatched a letter on Thursday to numerous companies, such as the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the Internal Revenue Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

In it, she aired her worries, bringing up a current case in her domestic kingdom of New Hampshire where $2.three million changed into stolen in a cyberattack withinside the city of Peterborough earlier than being transformed into cryptocurrency.

She mentioned the distinction among centralized exchanges with Know Your Customer necessities and decentralized exchanges and over the counter desks with out such necessities, including that greater KYC enforcement changed into needed.

Hassan requested some of questions on what movement companies have been taking to slash the illicit use of cryptocurrencies for ransomware.

Hassan is a member of the Senate Finance Committee along Senator Elizabeth Warren, who categorized crypto the “new shadow bank” in advance this month. The committee has jurisdiction over topics regarding taxation and revenues, change agreements, and tariffs.

Related: Don’t blame crypto for ransomware

Lawmakers on each facets of the aisle were offering their arguments for and towards cryptocurrencies as regulatory stress mounts withinside the United States.

In an interview with Reason Magazine in advance this month, Senator Cynthia Lummis stated that her imaginative and prescient changed into to create a regulatory and statutory framework, including:

In early August, senators Ron Wyden, Lummis and Pat Toomey proposed an change to the debatable infrastructure invoice searching for clearer terminology across the crypto tax provisions to make sure it might now no longer stifle innovation.

However, the invoice handed the Senate on Aug. 10, with the language extensively classifying maximum actors as crypto agents last unchanged. This manner that software program firms, community validators, stakers and miners can be situation to third-celebration tax reporting necessities if the bipartisan infrastructure invoice passes a very last vote on Sept. 27 as scheduled through House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.