The Clarity Act isn't a ticket to sanctions evasion, actually

Last week, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren took to X to suggest that the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, at least as it is currently drafted, is a “ticket to sanctions evasion,” joining a small-but-loud chorus of critics expressing concern about the impact the pending legislation could have on national security. Because some of the scrutiny is coming from people who have spent time in the sanctions and national security space, their questions about where enforcement gaps might sit deserve careful engagement.

Let me be clear. The Clarity Act is not, as Senator Warren put it, a ticket to sanctions evasion. It is a way to stop sanctions evasion, and stop it at scale, because the bill builds directly on tools already producing results in the field.

Ari Redbord is the Global Head of Policy at TRM Labs. Prior to joining TRM, Ari was the Senior Advisor to the Deputy Secretary and the Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence at the United States Treasury.

Ironically, some critics of the bill have pointed to recent reporting by the Wall Street Journal on the Hong Kong exchange CoinEx as evidence of the risk. CoinEx is actually a story of how to use a public ledger to track, trace, and disrupt nation state activity.

Investigators traced roughly 3.84 billion dollars in transactions tied to Iran, connecting wallets controlled by Iran's central bank to sanctioned military networks and to funds stolen separately by North Korean hackers. That level of detail is knowable today because it happened on a public blockchain, the same visibility critics are treating as the risk.

What the Clarity Act actually contains

Clarity contains nearly twenty distinct provisions addressing anti-money laundering, sanctions, and law enforcement authority.

As the bill is currently drafted, digital asset service providers get brought fully under the Bank Secrecy Act for the first time, with risk assessments, internal controls, a compliance officer, training, audits, and suspicious activity reporting all required.

Real-time information sharing between exchanges and law enforcement gets written into statute as recognized practice — the Beacon Network model of real time interdiction, seizure and disruption — replacing voluntary industry coordination with a legal standard.

An independent working group gets tasked with developing AI-powered tools to detect and disrupt terrorist financing and money laundering in digital asset markets. Kiosk operators face wallet pinning, hold periods, and daily transaction caps for first-time users, paired with blockchain intelligence requirements to catch scammers before funds leave the platform.