{"id":62776,"date":"2026-03-09T11:17:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T04:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hbbgroup.net\/treasury-urges-congress-to-give-crypto-platforms-power-to-freeze-suspicious-funds\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T11:17:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T04:17:13","slug":"treasury-urges-congress-to-give-crypto-platforms-power-to-freeze-suspicious-funds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hbbgroup.net\/zh\/treasury-urges-congress-to-give-crypto-platforms-power-to-freeze-suspicious-funds\/","title":{"rendered":"Treasury Urges Congress to Give Crypto Platforms Power to Freeze Suspicious Funds"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<h4 color=\"#333\">In brief<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>The Treasury has recommended a \u201chold law\u201d allowing platforms to pause suspicious crypto transfers during investigations.<\/li>\n<li>The proposal appears in a GENIUS Act report on tools to counter illicit finance involving digital assets.<\/li>\n<li>The idea could help law enforcement react faster, though legal and transparency questions remain, Decrypt was told.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p><span>The U.S. Treasury is urging Congress to consider creating a digital asset-specific \u201chold law\u201d that would allow crypto platforms to temporarily freeze funds linked to suspected illegal activity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The recommendation has appeared in a Treasury <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/home.treasury.gov\/system\/files\/246\/GENIUS-Act-Illicit-Finance-Innovation-Congressional-Report-March-2026.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"><span>report<\/span><\/a><span> to Congress on technologies used to counter illicit finance involving digital assets, produced under the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins, or GENIUS Act.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cLawful users of digital assets may leverage mixers to enable financial privacy when transacting through public blockchains,\u201d the report reads, adding that a measure for the hold law would create a legal safe harbor allowing financial institutions to \u201ctemporarily and voluntarily hold digital assets involved in suspected illegal activity\u201d during an investigation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The authority could allow institutions to pause suspicious transfers before funds are moved or converted through other crypto services.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cExchanges often detect suspicious funds using blockchain intelligence, but there is not always a clear legal framework that allows them to hold those assets long enough for investigators to act,\u201d Ari Redbord, global head of policy and government affairs at TRM Labs, told <\/span><i><span>Decrypt<\/span><\/i><span>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The move could help \u201ccreate a defined window for platforms to pause those funds while law enforcement moves through the legal process,\u201d Redbord added.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>If adopted, it could \u201cstrengthen how exchanges handle suspicious transactions,\u201d Redbord explained, adding that in practice, it would give law enforcement \u201ctime to catch up to the speed of blockchain transactions,\u201d and \u201cstrengthen public-private partnerships.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The recommendation comes as Congress debates broader legislation on the structure of the crypto market, with President Donald Trump <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/decrypt.co\/359866\/trump-urges-congress-move-on-crypto-rules-banking-clash\" target=\"_blank\"><span>pressing lawmakers<\/span><\/a><span> to move faster on crypto rules amid a clash between banks and digital asset firms.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>While exchanges can report suspicious activity, holding the funds is legally harder, Andrew Rossow, public affairs attorney and CEO of AR Media Consulting, told <\/span><i><span>Decrypt<\/span><\/i><span>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cBanks already have the ability to delay a suspicious transaction, but that power is very narrow and legally awkward,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Institutions can file a suspicious activity report, yet there is no \u201cclean statutory safe harbor allowing the bank to hold the funds while the investigation unfolds\u201d without a court order, sanctions authority, or risking liability.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cFor crypto exchanges, this problem is even more awkward because there is no \u2018pending state\u2019 or \u2018freeze\u2019 that is \u2018clean,\u2019\u201d he added, noting that while the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.occ.treas.gov\/topics\/supervision-and-examination\/bsa\/index-bsa.html\" target=\"_blank\"><span>Bank Secrecy Act<\/span><\/a><span> protects institutions that file suspicious activity reports in good faith, it does not clearly authorize them to freeze the funds tied to those reports.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Exchanges that detect suspicious crypto flows would then need to choose between allowing the funds to move or freezing them, risking legal exposure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>If a hold law gets adopted, crypto platforms will have clear authority to pause the assets while authorities review the case, Rossow explained.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>But the Treasury\u2019s report has \u201cleft a number of vulnerabilities unresolved,\u201d Rossow noted, pointing to questions around the reliability of blockchain analytics and the \u201ctipping off\u201d restrictions tied to current suspicious activity reporting rules.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The proposal could create a paradox where transparency rules require disclosing a freeze, while suspicious activity reporting (SAR) rules prohibit explaining the underlying investigation, he warned.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cIf you freeze someone&#8217;s assets and then must be transparent about it, but cannot tell them you filed a SAR, you now have a structural paradox. The customer will know they&#8217;re frozen; but they won&#8217;t know why. This creates a legal gray zone that would need to be exploited.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Still, the recommendation could help create a \u201cpractical and important tool in the fight against crypto fraud and money laundering,\u201d TRM Labs\u2019 Redbord said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cCriminals move quickly, and digital assets move even faster,\u201d he said. \u201cA narrowly tailored hold authority helps close that gap.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<div>\n<h3>Daily Debrief Newsletter<\/h3>\n<p>Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In brief The Treasury has recommended a \u201chold law\u201d allowing platforms to pause suspicious crypto transfers during investigations. The proposal [&hellip;]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":62778,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[220],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tien-dien-tu"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hbbgroup.net\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hbbgroup.net\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hbbgroup.net\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hbbgroup.net\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hbbgroup.net\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hbbgroup.net\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hbbgroup.net\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hbbgroup.net\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hbbgroup.net\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hbbgroup.net\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}