Some United States senators are ramping upwards the anti-crypto rhetoric once more, urging federal agencies to have action against the illicit utilise of digital assets.

Senator Maggie Hassan is the latest to raise concerns about the utilize of cryptocurrency as a means of payment for ransomware attacks.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Commission member sent a letter on Thursday to several agencies, including the Justice Section, the Section of Homeland Security, the Internal Acquirement Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Treasury Department's Fiscal Crimes Enforcement Network.

In it, she aired her concerns, citing a recent case in her home state of New Hampshire where $ii.iii meg was stolen in a cyberattack in the boondocks of Peterborough earlier beingness converted into cryptocurrency.

"The anonymity provided by cryptocurrency has helped facilitate its apply by criminals in a myriad of ways. These uses include drug sales over the nighttime spider web, payments for ransomware attacks, tax evasion, financing for terrorism and organized crime, coin laundering, and more."

She outlined the divergence between centralized exchanges with Know Your Customer requirements and decentralized exchanges and over-the-counter desks without such requirements, calculation that more KYC enforcement was needed.

Hassan asked a number of questions about what activeness agencies were taking to adjourn the illicit use of cryptocurrencies for ransomware.

Hassan is a fellow member of the Senate Finance Committee alongside Senator Elizabeth Warren, who labeled crypto the "new shadow depository financial institution" earlier this month. The committee has jurisdiction over matters relating to taxation and revenues, trade agreements, and tariffs.

Related: Don't blame crypto for ransomware

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have been presenting their arguments for and against cryptocurrencies as regulatory pressure mounts in the United States.

In an interview with Reason Magazine before this month, Senator Cynthia Lummis said that her vision was to create a regulatory and statutory framework, adding:

"We desire to make sure that Bitcoin, stablecoins, tokens can innovate and that the U.South. dollar tin can innovate as well and become a digital currency. So there'south going to exist formats that people can use that are much more user-friendly than our more onetime-fashioned forms of currency."

In early August, senators Ron Wyden, Lummis and Pat Toomey proposed an amendment to the controversial infrastructure bill seeking clearer terminology effectually the crypto tax provisions to ensure it would non stifle innovation.

Still, the bill passed the Senate on Aug. 10, with the language broadly classifying near actors equally crypto brokers remaining unchanged. This means that software firms, network validators, stakers and miners may be subject to 3rd-party tax reporting requirements if the bipartisan infrastructure bill passes a concluding vote on Sept. 27 as scheduled past House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.