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BitPay fined for $500K for transactions with Iran and Cuba



Low fines caused more enthusiasm than harm



26.Feb.21 4:11 PM
By Shawn Highstraw
Photo toinnov.com

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BitPay fined for $500K for transactions with Iran and Cuba
The US Treasury Department is settling with the cryptocurrency payment service BitPay for violations of sanctions against countries such as Cuba, Iran and North Korea. In that settlement, BitPay pays more than half a million dollars.

According to the ministry, between 2013 and 2018, more than 2100 cases were identified where BitPay would have allowed people from those countries to do transactions with digital currencies with traders in the United States and elsewhere in the world. The total value of these transactions was approximately $ 129,000. BitPay did have control systems for transactions with those countries, but according to the authorities this should have been better monitored. BitPay says that since then much has been done to improve the control of such transactions.

Regulators have long expressed concerns about the use of cryptocurrencies by, for example, criminals to fund illegal activities due to the lack of supervision of that market. The call for stricter regulation of digital currencies such as bitcoin is therefore growing, among others from President Christine Lagarde of the European Central Bank (ECB) and US Secretary of Finance Janet Yellen.

Meanwhile, the bitcoin rose to a new record level of over $ 54,000 on Friday. The total market for bitcoins is more than 1000 billion dollars, thanks to the increasing popularity of digital currency is at large companies, and professional investors.



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