U.S. Senate's Warren asks for Trump-tied crypto probe as market structure bill drags

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren has asked for another U.S. national-security probe into a corner of the crypto sector, specifying concerns with PancakeSwap, a decentralized exchange she flagged as trying to amplify coins issued by President Donald Trump-connected World Liberty Financial Inc.

She said the exchange, which operates across several blockchains and is a major protocol on Binance's chain, should be reviewed for connection to "any improper 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 for them to look into it, echoing a similar request she was involved with last month regarding WLFI.

“As Congress considers crypto market structure legislation — including rules to prevent terrorists, criminals, and rogue states from exploiting decentralized finance (DeFi) to fund their activities — it is critical to understand whether you are seriously investigating these risks,” wrote Warren, who is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee that must mark up the legislation and approve it before the wider Senate can take a vote

Warren has largely been sidelined on crypto negotiations in her committee as a significant group of fellow Democrats has agreed to negotiate with Republicans on the bill to regulate the wider U.S. crypto markets. That process failed to meet the industry's hopes for action before the end of the year, and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott has said it'll 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 trade." DeFi treatment remains one of the major points still to resolve between the parties on the market structure bill, and crypto insiders have described it as a red-line issue that could decide whether or not the industry will or won't support the final legislation.

It's unlikely that Trump's own administration will 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 don't constitute a conflict of interests.

That's another of the sticking points in the market structure bill negotiations — a request by Democrats to ban senior government officials from pursuing business interests within the sector. Though negotiators from both sides have expressed confidence they'll get to a compromise bill in the Senate, the White House has already rejected some initial proposals on that point, raising questions about the status of the talks that'll resume next month.

If the negotiation drags for more than a few weeks into the new year, it could run afoul of Congress' budget talks that come to a head around a Jan. 30 deadline. Last time, the budget dispute shut down the federal government for weeks and further delayed the crypto legislation.

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