The U.S. Treasury Department said on Monday in a report that cryptocurrencies could undermine the effectiveness of U.S. sanctions.
- The report, which followed a six-month review of U.S. sanctions against countries with whom it is at odds or suspects of being behind illegal activity, noted that “digital currencies, alternative payment platforms, and new ways of hiding cross-border transactions all potentially reduce the efficacy of American sanctions.”
- “These technologies offer malign actors opportunities to hold and transfer funds outside the traditional dollar-based financial system,” the report said, and could be used by adversaries “to to build new financial and payments systems intended to diminish the dollar’s global role.”
- The U.S. has put over 9,000 sanctions in place against countries that it alleges are behind terrorism and illegal actions or committed human rights violations, including North Korea and Iran, according to a New York Times story.
- The report recommended that the agency itself enhance its “institutional knowledge” of cryptocurrencies and their use.
- It also recommended that the agency itself improve its communications with industry organizations, financial institutions and others that touch the crypto space.
DraftKings tapped Polygon for its marquee non-fungible token (NFT) release with Tom Brady’s Autograph back in August.
Now the sports betting giant is going all-in on the Ethereum layer-2 solution with a partnership that could make it one of the blockchain’s largest governors.
DraftKings, valued at nearly $20 billion on the public market, is planning to use Polygon to support custom NFT drops and secondary-market transactions.
“Scalability and sustainability remain among the critical challenges of blockchain technology,” Paul Liberman, president of global product and technology at DraftKings, said in a statement Monday. “Although DraftKings Marketplace is still in its nascency, we are bullish on the possibilities that blockchain, NFTs, cryptocurrency and more will present as we prepare for Web 3.0 alongside Polygon and the new innovations ahead for digital collectibles.”
Read more: DraftKings Charts NFT Long-Game With Marketplace Debut
The partnership also gives DraftKings the option to contribute to Polygon’s governance, a system where token holders have a say in implementing changes to the network after staking their tokens on the platform.
A Polygon representative told CoinDesk in an interview they anticipate DraftKings’ governance to begin “in the next month.”
Europe’s largest telecommunications company, Deutsche Telekom AG, pulled a similar move in February, providing backend support for Chainlink and Flow, the blockchain that hosts NBA Top Shot.
We take a look at how the upcoming bitcoin ETF will work, how it compares to a spot ETF and whether it will see high demand.
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