The U.S. Treasury Department announced yesterday that Tornado Cash, its official website and multiple associated Ethereum and USDC addresses have been added to the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s (OFAC) SDN Sanctions list. All U.S. individuals and entities are prohibited from interacting with the Agreement or associated wallet addresses.
Tornado Cash has been used to launder more than $7 billion worth of cryptocurrencies since 2019, including more than $455 million stolen by the Lazarus Group, a North Korea-backed hacking group sanctioned by the U.S. in 2019, the Treasury Department said.
Is the largest known cryptocurrency heist to date.
About $1.140.7 billion of stolen funds were transferred to Tornado Cash by hackers in the first half of 2022, accounting for 60 percent of total Web3 losses, Web3 blockchain security firm Beosin tweeted data earlier in the day after the U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions against Tornado cash.
In the first half of 2022, about $1.140.7 billion of stolen funds were transferred to Tornado cash by hackers. According to data from DuneAnalytics, nearly 3.5 million Ether coins had been deposited on Tornado Cash as of press time, reaching 3.489,754.
The value of US dollars deposited was approximately US $7,626,132,243, and the total transaction fee income reached US $18,119,516, with 12,243 unique deposit users and 58,683 unique deposit users.
Notably, according to Coindesk, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken posted a tweet on Wednesday alleging that Tornado Cash is a North Korean hacking group,
In the tweet, he referred to Tornado Cash as a North Korea-backed hacking group sanctioned by the U.S. and used by North Korea to launder money.
Blinken’s tweet was deleted about an hour and three minutes after it was posted. Blinken followed up with another tweet that matched the U.S. Treasury’s account of Tornado Cash,
In a new tweet, he said Tornado Cash has been used to launder money by North Korean state-sponsored cyber hacking groups that are under U.S. sanctions.
As the U.S. Treasury Department slapped sanctions on Tornado Cash, Venturefounder, an analyst at blockchain data firm CryptoQuant, warned on Twitter that after Tornado Cash,
Monero(XMR), Zcash(ZEC) and other private cryptocurrencies, which may face a very high risk of sanctions, call on users to manage their assets carefully.
Nicholas Gregory, chief executive of blockchain infrastructure firm Commerce Block, said the ban on Tornado Cash makes no sense because ultimately no one can stop people from using other smart contracts with mixed currency or forking existing contracts.
Nor does it hinder privacy.
Nicholas Gregory also questioned if people outside the US were to mix their money through Tornado and put it in Uniswap.
And then I came across the dirt money from Uniswap. Am I breaking US law now?