Here's how the U.S. Treasury Department plans to take action against Tether

The American Treasury Department wants to expand its authority over non-U.S. crypto companies and projects. U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo has submitted a proposal to some members of Congress to expand the enforcement- and sanctions capabilities of its agency to be expanded, so reports the crypto portal CoinDesk.

According to Adeyemo, it involves "a series of recommendations to expand powers and expand the tools and resources to prosecute illegal actors in the digital asset sector." In the rapidly evolving global financial infrastructure, this is necessary because "many of our authorities have not been updated for decades," the lawyer said.

The background is also the use of stablecoins such as Tether and cryptomixers by terrorist organizations such as Hamas, which would use digital assets to hide their funding streams. Specifically, Adeyemo calls for "a new secondary sanction instrument" against crypto exchanges that would support terrorism. This sanction instrument would then apply not only against the companies themselves, but also against all companies that did business with the primary company, Adeemo said.

The US has been increasingly targeting the international crypto sector for months. Recently FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty on all seven charges. A few weeks later, the U.S. Department of Justice released Billions of dollars in fines agree with crypto exchange Binance. CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao resigned as a result of the settlement. Binance's new CEO is Richard Teng.