S.Amdt. 2301

What the amendment does: The amendment, submitted by Mr. Reed and Mrs. Shaheen, adds a new subtitle called Strengthening Counter-terrorist Financing Activities to the bill S. 1582.

Its main purpose: It aims to give the President specific authorities to impose sanctions on digital asset platforms that knowingly facilitate significant transactions with specially designated global terrorists or engage in money laundering for them.

Key changes and additions:

• It defines critical terms like digital asset, digital asset platform, financial institution, and foreign person.
• It outlines a list of sanctions the President can use against bad actors, such as blocking property and digital assets, restricting business accounts, adding platforms to a Department of Commerce entity list, limiting loans from U.S. financial institutions, and banning investments.
• It establishes penalties for violations and provides specific exceptions for intelligence activities, law enforcement, official government business, and humanitarian assistance involving food or medicine.
• It allows the President to issue a national interest waiver with a required notice and report to the appropriate congressional committees.
• It expands extraterritorial jurisdiction so that U.S. dollar-denominated payment stablecoins and certain digital asset platforms operating in interstate commerce are considered subject to U.S. jurisdiction.
• It updates the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to give the President authority over blockchain-enabled smart contracts and related technologies.