<\/p>\n
USDC stablecoin issuer Circle has denied<\/a> claims of illicit financing and ties to Tron founder Justin Sun, according to an open letter accessed from Circle\u2019s blog on Nov. 30. A non-profit watchdog group previously accused Circle of having ties to Sun.<\/p>\n The post was published on Nov. 11 and modified on Nov. 30, but Cointelegraph couldn\u2019t determine the publication date of the letter itself. The letter was addressed to U.S. senators Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown and signed by Circle chief strategy officer and head of public policy Dante Disparte.<\/p>\n In the letter, Disparte claimed that Circle has \u201crecently became aware\u201d of \u201cfalse\u201d claims being made about it by the \u201cso-called Campaign for Accountability (\u201cCfA\u201d). Circle \u201cdoes not facilitate, directly or indirectly, or finance Hamas (or any other illicit actors),\u201d Disparte stated. In addition, it does not \u201cbank\u201d or provide financial services to Justin Sun, he claimed.<\/p>\n Disparte dismissed the allegation that Circle facilitated \u201cmajor flows of funds to Hamas or Hezbollah,\u201d claiming instead that these accusations are based on uncorroborated, unverified posts to social media. \u201cOnly $160 was transferred in USDC among [illicit wallets]\u201d the letter stated, adding that \u201cnone of that was acquired from Circle.\u201d<\/p>\n Disparte also claimed that Circle stopped providing services to Justin Sun in February, 2023, stating:<\/p>\n \u201cNeither Mr. Sun nor any entity owned or controlled by Mr. Sun, including the TRON Foundation or Huobi Global, currently have accounts with Circle. To date, the U.S. government has not specifically designated Mr. Sun or his entities as Specially Designated Nationals. Nonetheless, Circle terminated all accounts held by Mr. Sun and his affiliated companies in February 2023.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The open letter from Circle appears to have been sent in response to a Nov. 9 letter from the non-profit ethics group Campaign for Accountability (CfA). CfA\u2019s letter claimed that Circle has extensive ties to Justin Sun\u2019s Tron Foundation<\/a> and major Wall Street investors and that Sun\u2019s cross-chain protocol, SunSwap, is often used for money laundering.<\/p>\n Related: <\/strong>WSJ debacle fueled US lawmakers\u2019 ill-informed crusade against crypto<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Claims that crypto is being used to finance terrorism have been commonplace since the Israeli-Hamas war broke out on Oct. 7. On Oct. 10, The Wall Street Journal reported that \u201cover $130 million\u201d of cryptocurrency had been donated to terrorist organizations. The media outlet later corrected its story<\/a>, stating instead that $12 million in crypto \u201cmay have been\u201d sent to these organizations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" USDC stablecoin issuer Circle has denied claims of illicit financing and ties to Tron founder Justin Sun, according to an open letter accessed from Circle\u2019s blog on Nov. 30. A non-profit watchdog group previously accused Circle of having ties to Sun. Circle open letter to U.S. senators Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown. Source: Circle. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[235,203,210,234,231,232,237,238,236,233],"class_list":["post-204006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blockchain","tag-bitcoin","tag-crypto-currency","tag-elon-musk","tag-ethereum","tag-hyperledger","tag-ibm","tag-mining","tag-nodes","tag-spacex","tag-tesla"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204006"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":204009,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204006\/revisions\/204009"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}