Tornado Cash gets 75% of the laundered ETH

According to the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Lazarus Group was responsible for some of the greatest attacks in the crypto industry, including the Ronin bridge hack (FBI). As a result, Tornado Cash came under fire for allowing billions of dollars in funds to be laundered through its platform.

Tornado Cash is reported to have been used to launder more than $7 billion in digital assets since its creation in 2019. The Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) sanctioned the currency mixer earlier this month, prohibiting US persons and businesses from utilizing it immediately.

Following that, Kraken, the USDC stablecoin owned by a consortium of Circle and Coinbase, suspended accounts associated with Tornado Cash. The Treasury watchdog’s harsh move may have forced several industry players to ban addresses associated with the mixer, igniting a fresh round of debates about how far protocols and organizations will go to comply with government regulations.

Contesting the Ban

Think tank for non-profit crypto policy Coin Centre, for example, is eager to take the matter to court. Its fundamental point is that banning the entire platform is not justifiable, and it also claims that OFAC may have exceeded its statutory powers.

Kraken CEO Jesse Powell agrees that removing Tornado Cash’s code repositories from Github was unnecessary, adding that there are privacy-conscious and law-abiding consumers whose interests should not have been harmed.