The list of Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) includes individuals and entities associated with sanctioned governments, terrorism, trafficking in weapons of mass destruction, and illegal drug trafficking. This list includes varying types of records, including in some cases only names, but in other cases names, addresses, aliases, etc.
This was obviously triggered by Venezuela's Petro offering. Ostensibly, they're only interested in very serious things -- sanctioned governments, terrorism and drug trafficking. I wouldn't think too much of it.
As exchanges would see, the early successes of blacklisting Bitcoin addresses may also lose their effectiveness soon once we have, for example, cross-platform atomic swaps. Throw in a whole slew of mixers, cross-blockchain swaps, and say, even simple OTC exchanges with unsuspecting new buyers of crypto to privacy coins, and it might become less difficult for hackers and blacklisted address owners to clean their ill-gotten gains.
Goodluck to OFAC keeping up with the dark Joneses.
It reeks of an agency that wants to looks like it's doing
something. That's what government agencies do -- they need to justify their existence, after all. Obviously with simple address blacklisting, they can't possibly keep tabs on all fund transmission (especially across multiple networks).
