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United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday that her department is not seeing significant use of cryptocurrencies to evade sanctions placed on Russian oligarchs and government agencies. Yellen\u00a0was asked<\/a>\u00a0repeatedly about digital asset security at the committee\u2019s annual hearing on the state of the international financial system.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are aware of the possibility clearly that crypto could be used as a tool to evade sanctions and we are carefully monitoring to make sure that doesn\u2019t occur,\u201d\u00a0Yellen said<\/a>, \u201cbut I would say that we have a good deal of authority in this area and are using it and will use it.\u201d <\/p>\n It is hard to use crypto to evade sanctions, Yellen assured the committee, as blockchains are being \u201cregularly examined,\u201d and large transactions would be made note of. \u201c[Crypto] exchanges are subject to [Anti-Money Laundering\/Combatting the Financing of Terrorism] AML\/CFT regulations, so they are part of the financial system,\u201d\u00a0she said<\/a>. \u201cWe haven\u2019t seen significant evasion through crypto so far.\u201d<\/p>\n The Treasury\u2019s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced Tuesday that it will impose sanctions<\/a> on Moscow-based virtual currency exchange Garantex for disregarding AML\/CFT regulations, and on the Russian-language darknet marketplace Hydra for accommodating ransomware attacks. The treasury was one of several U.S. agencies that worked to sanction those organizations. <\/p>\n Sanctions were not the only crypto-related issues on committee members\u2019 minds. Rep. Bill Foster asked about digital identity verification. Yellen said<\/a> her department has \u201cvery wide-ranging equities in the digital identity space, in part because we administer public benefits [and] tax refunds,\u201d and assured the congressman that \u201cwe are fleshing out actions that we can take to advance this agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio expressed his concern about preserving self-hosted digital wallets, which\u00a0he characterized<\/a>\u00a0as \u201cself-custody of private property without an intermediary.\u201d<\/p>\n Yellen will speak about U.S. President Joe Biden\u2019s executive order on digital assets and the Treasury\u2019s approach to it at American University in Washington, DC on Thursday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n