By Hannah Lang

(Reuters] – A bill was introduced by Democratic U.S. senators on Thursday. It would permit the president to ban foreign crypto firms that do business with sanctioned Russian organizations and prohibit them from doing business in America.

Senator Elizabeth Warren is the leader of the Digital Asset Sanctions Compliance Act and it’s cosponsored by 10 Democrats including Jon Tester and Mark Warner.

Although the bill will not be passed anytime soon, it may increase pressure on cryptocurrency exchanges. This is despite concerns expressed by Warren and other lawmakers that some digital assets could be used to bypass a series of Western sanctions placed on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin “and his cronies can move, store and hide their wealth using cryptocurrencies, potentially allowing them to evade the historic economic sanctions the U.S. and its partners across the world have levied in response to Russia’s war against Ukraine,” Warren said in a statement.

Biden administration officials said that Russia cannot use crypto currencies to avoid sanctions. This was despite the fact that there is not enough liquidity on cryptocurrency markets to enable high-volume transactions. However, the Treasury Department stressed that all digital asset companies must comply with sanctions.

Warren’s bill would also allow the Treasury secretary to block digital asset platforms operating in the United States from transacting with any Russian crypto users, a step that major crypto exchanges like Coinbase (NASDAQ:) and Kraken have said they would not take without a legal requirement.

This bill also requires the Treasury to identify any foreign cryptocurrency trading platforms that are high in risk of money laundering or sanctions evasion. The U.S. tax payers would be required to report all offshore crypto transactions above $10,000.