US Senator Elizabeth Warren has called for another US national security investigation into a corner of the crypto sector, specifying her concerns about PancakeSwap, a decentralized exchange that she flagged as trying to amplify coins issued by World Liberty Financial Inc, linked to President Donald Trump.
She said the exchange, which operates on multiple blockchains and is a major protocol on the Binance chain, should be examined to determine its connection to “any inappropriate political influence by the Trump administration on enforcement decisions,” Warren said in a letter Monday to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Attorney General Pam Bondi, asking them to look into the matter, echoing a similar request she participated in last month regarding WLFI.
“As Congress considers legislation on crypto market structure — 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 full Senate can vote.
Warren has been largely sidelined from crypto negotiations within her committee, as a sizable group of her Democratic colleagues agreed to negotiate with Republicans on the bill to regulate broader U.S. crypto markets. That process fell short of industry hopes for action before the end of the year, and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott said the topic would now be on the panel’s agenda in January.
Warren criticized DeFi platforms that “facilitate hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions per day and do not require users to register or present any form of identification to transact.” The DeFi treatment remains one of the main points to be resolved 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 support the final legislation.
The Trump administration is unlikely to respond to a request for an investigation into the president’s business interests. White House officials and the president have continued to argue that his crypto ties do not constitute a conflict of interest.
It’s another sticking point in negotiations over the market structure bill: a demand from Democrats to bar top government officials from pursuing commercial interests in the sector. Although negotiators on both sides have expressed confidence in reaching a compromise plan in the Senate, the White House has already rejected some initial proposals on the issue, raising questions about the status of negotiations that resume next month.
If negotiations drag on beyond a few weeks into the new year, they could run afoul of Congress’ budget negotiations, which come to a head around the Jan. 30 deadline. Last time around, the budget conflict paralyzed the federal government for weeks and further delayed crypto legislation.
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