BitPay will have to pay the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control over half a million dollars for crypto services to sanctioned regions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a Feb. 18 announcement\u00a0of the settlement, OFAC said that BitPay had facilitated “approximately $129,000 worth of digital currency-related transactions with BitPay\u2019s merchant customers” by users from\u00a0Crimea, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Sudan and Syria \u2014 effectively the full range of geographical sanctions that OFAC has in place.\u00a0<\/p>\n
OFAC repeated that crypto firms need to align themselves with sanctions programs, saying:\u00a0<\/p>\n
“This action emphasizes that OFAC obligations apply to all U.S. persons, including those involved in providing digital currency services.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The 2,102 transactions that OFAC cites reportedly occurred between 2013 and 2018, during which time the office says that BitPay, which provides crypto-enabled transactions between customers and merchants, screened only merchants.<\/p>\n
Despite adding IP address info about customers in 2017, OFAC says that BitPay did not analyze that information to identify users in sanctioned locations until much later.<\/p>\n
OFAC reached a similar settlement with BitGo at the end of 2020. While neither featured crippling fines, the office, which oversees all U.S. sanctions, is clearly sending a message to the crypto world.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While a number of sanctioned jurisdictions have expressed interest in using crypto to evade them, projects like Venezuela’s Petro token have not caught on.<\/p>\n