U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has called for another U.S. national security probe into a corner of the crypto sector, citing concerns with PancakeSwap, a decentralized exchange she flagged for trying to boost coins issued by President Donald Trump-linked World Liberty Financial Inc.
She said the exchange, which operates across multiple blockchains and is a key protocol on Binance’s chain, should be reviewed for links to “any undue political influence by the Trump administration on enforcement decisions,” Warren said in a Monday letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Attorney General Pam Bondi asking them to look into it, and she was involved in a similar request last month.
“As Congress considers crypto market structure legislation — including rules to prevent terrorists, criminals and rogue states from leveraging decentralized finance (DeFi) to fund their activities — it is critical to understand whether you are seriously examining these risks,” wrote Warren, who is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, which must mark the legislation it can pass and approve before the broad vote can be passed.
Warren has been largely sidelined in crypto negotiations in her committee, as a significant group of Democrats have agreed to negotiate with Republicans on the bill to regulate the broader US crypto markets. That process failed to meet industry hopes for action by the end of the year, and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott has said it will now be on the panel’s plate in January.
Warren criticized the DeFi platforms that “facilitate hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions per day and do not require users to register or show any form of identification to transact.” DeFi processing remains one of the key points still to be resolved between the parties in the market structure bill, and crypto insiders have described it as a red-line issue that could determine whether or not the industry will support the final legislation.
Trump’s own administration is unlikely to respond to a request to investigate the president’s business interests. White House officials and the president have continued to argue that his crypto ties do not pose a conflict of interest.
It’s another of the issues at stake in negotiations over the market structure bill — a request by Democrats to bar senior officials from pursuing business interests in the sector. Although negotiators from both sides have expressed confidence they will reach a compromise proposal in the Senate, the White House has already rejected some initial proposals on the issue, raising questions about the status of talks that resume next month.
If the negotiations drag on for more than a few weeks into the new year, it could run afoul of congressional budget negotiations that will finish around a Jan. 30 deadline. Last time, the budget dispute shut down the federal government for weeks and further delayed crypto legislation.
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