USDC issuer Circle says in a letter to US Senators that it doesn\u2019t finance illegal actors.<\/p>\n
Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, has sent a letter<\/a> to U.S. Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Elizabeth Warren<\/a> (N-MA) refuting claims that the company financed Hamas and other illicit actors.<\/p>\n Tron founder Justin Sun<\/a> was explicitly named in the letter.<\/p>\n \u201cCircle does not \u201cbank\u201d Justin Sun,\u201d wrote Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Global Policy for Circle, Dante Disparte, adding that \u201cNeither Mr. Sun nor any entity owned or controlled by Mr. Sun, including the TRON Foundation or Huobi Global, currently have accounts with Circle.\u201d<\/p>\n Sun has been under the microscope lately.<\/p>\n Bittrace, a blockchain analytics firm, alleged<\/a> on Nov. 28 that the majority of activity – some $17B worth – on Tron is linked with illicit purposes. That figure includes illegal forex, commodity transactions, and cryptocurrency transactions, among other activities.<\/p>\n \u201cCircle does not facilitate, directly or indirectly, or finance Hamas (or any other illicit actors), \u201d Disparte said.<\/p>\n The response comes after the Campaign For Accountability, a non-profit ethics watchdog group based in Washington D.C., claimed the crypto company was financing and facilitating illicit actors with access to digital dollars.<\/p>\n Disparte added that \u201cCircle has always been an active partner of regulators and law enforcement in the United States, Israel, and other jurisdictions to help ensure that our stablecoin, USDC<\/a>, does not fund illicit activity of any kind.\u201d<\/p>\n The U.S. Congress has placed heightened pressure on the crypto industry after a report in the Wall Street Journal alleged that Palestinian terrorist groups held up to $93 million in digital assets.<\/p>\n However, according to Disparte, public blockchain data show that of the $93 million in digital assets wallets identified by the Israeli government, only $160 was transferred in USDC among those wallets, and none of that was acquired from Circle.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also important to note that neither Sun nor his entities have been officially sanctioned by U.S authorities.<\/p>\n Start for free<\/a><\/div>\n Observers have pointed out that projects linked to Sun constitute a considerable portion of the cryptocurrency market.<\/p>\n Roughly $47B worth of USDT lives on Tron, and an additional $9B (20%) of the $47B of assets locked across DeFi is also connected to Sun\u2019s platforms.<\/p>\n JustLend, for example, recently surpassed<\/a> Aave as the largest Web3 lending market, with a TVL of $6.08 billion, according to DefiLlama.<\/p>\n\n
Sun\u2019s Outsized Crypto Footprint<\/h2>\n