USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin issuer Circle has denied claims of illicit financing and ties to Tron founder Justin Sun in an open letter posted to Circle’s weblog on Nov. 30. A nonprofit watchdog group beforehand accused Circle of having ties to Sun.
The submit was revealed on Nov. 11 and modified on Nov. 30, however Cointelegraph couldn’t decide 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 technique officer and head of public coverage Dante Disparte.
Within the letter, Disparte claims that Circle has “just lately turned conscious” of “false” claims being made about it by the “so-called Marketing campaign for Accountability.” The letter provides that “Circle doesn’t facilitate, instantly or not directly, or finance Hamas (or another illicit actors).” As well as, it doesn’t “financial institution” or present monetary providers to Sun, Disparte claimed.
Disparte dismissed the allegation that Circle facilitated “main flows of funds to Hamas or Hezbollah,” claiming as an alternative that these accusations are based mostly on uncorroborated, unverified posts to social media. “Solely $160 was transferred in USDC amongst [illicit wallets],” the letter said, including that “none of that was acquired from Circle.”
Disparte additionally claimed that Circle stopped offering providers to Sun in February, 2023, stating:
“Neither Mr. Sun nor any entity owned or managed by Mr. Sun, together with the TRON Basis or Huobi International, presently have accounts with Circle. To this point, the U.S. authorities has not particularly designated Mr. Sun or his entities as Specifically Designated Nationals. Nonetheless, Circle terminated all accounts held by Mr. Sun and his affiliated firms in February 2023.”
The open letter from Circle seems to have been despatched in response to a Nov. 9 letter from the nonprofit ethics group Marketing campaign for Accountability, whose letter claimed that Circle has extensive ties to Sun’s Tron Foundation and main Wall Road buyers and that Sun’s cross-chain protocol, SunSwap, is usually used for cash laundering.
Associated: WSJ debacle fueled US lawmakers’ ill-informed crusade against crypto
Claims that crypto is getting used to finance terrorism have been commonplace for the reason that Israeli-Hamas conflict broke out on Oct. 7. On Oct. 10, The Wall Road Journal reported that “over $130 million” of cryptocurrency had been donated to terrorist organizations. The media outlet later corrected its story, stating as an alternative that $12 million in crypto “could have been” despatched to these organizations.
