Bitcoin Forum

US just hit another mixer, the ethereum mixer Tornado cash.

What is interesting about this is that the service is actually a piece of code, which can be run locally or in another server.

https://tornado-cash.medium.com/tornado-cash-classic-ui-is-now-open-source-4b542b705a97

This the good thing of a decentralized platform, ^{(censorship-resistant)} authority can only suspends its website domain or hosting but it can still be used freely.
But since it's dependent to github repo, which can be sanctioned too like they did to Iran and other countries suspending github accounts or blocked the access of github with US request which they will do it lately, after realizing it's useless suspending only the website and not its whole process.
I hope there's also a decentralized code repositories ^{(better if there is already)} for decentralized platform's to preserve its codes.

Lol, Circle has apparently decided to ‘blacklists’ all Tornado Cash ETH addresses there by freezing USDC in them. This is an open warn against privacy and crypto in general ::)


They already did it (https://cointelegraph.com/news/tornado-cash-co-founder-reports-being-kicked-off-github-as-industry-reacts-to-sanctions)

https://i.imgur.com/rRwD3hn.png
https://twitter.com/semenov_roman_/status/1556717890308653059

Ooof, now worst thing will happen if this cofounder or anyone who related founding tornado.cash, their twitter accounts will be suspended/restricted, will be charged and sentenced in prison too.

I checked radicle^{[1][2](accessed through mobile)} as a github alternative and its a bit popular based on twitter followers, i just don't know how it works, i see not code and repositories too.

[1] https://radicle.xyz
[2] https://radicle.network

Nothing can stop Tornado Cash because the user can still interact with the smart contracts directly. I have not read all of the news, however, there are some people in social media who said that this is the first time a smart contract has been sanctioned. This implies that there is is a ban on interacting with the smart contract.

In any case, the solution will certainly be to fork Tornado Cash hehehe.

Also, this sanction will be a problem because it can be used against anyone. What if I use Tornado Cash then send those coins I mixed to Binance, FTX and Coinbase hot wallets?

I'd say since Tonardo Cash is serving an ERC20 tokens which is centralized, I don't believe they can mix those tokens and didn't link with the previous transactions because the validator will know where the token are send to.

Your account will get flagged by centralized exchanges since they're cooperate with money laundering company, they will look with your previous transaction and will know the token came from. If you using a bad privacy mixer, they will know the address is came from a mixer and even you're using a good mixer, they will know you're concealing your transaction.

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However since Chipmixer is also a centralized mixer, I'm worried since it's possible if Chipmixer get shutdown, or it's possible Chipmixer will only available on Tor network? Obviously google will follow any rules from government.

It can if they wanted to.

It has been only available on Tor network since this day (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1935098.msg60186638#msg60186638)

What would google do? Shutdown chipmixer?
I hope you are joking  :D

I have not heard of this service before, Is she central like Chipmixer? Or does it need collective cooperation (protocol management) like Wasabi/coinJoin?

In general, privacy is something that needs value, and I do not think that it is easy or cheap to hide identity from governments or countries that allocate resources to track you. Therefore, hiding identity in crptocurrencies will be more difficult in the future unless current technologies develop.

The biggest danger is the use of centralized cryptocurrencies, which give the developer the possibility to freeze access to your funds.

It is a smartcontract that runs on Eth blockchain. It is the best and most used and best mixed in Eth blockchain.
Fully decentralized, as it is just a smartcontract. Theoretically, it cannot be stopped (just the front end app, their website. But it still runs in the blockchain.)

Google can only remove the website appearing on google results, but you can't deny that lots of website reviews made a chipmixer reviews already which will show on google including their ANN thread.

I guess Vitalik Butern should go to jail because he publicly used TornadoCash many times  :)
I wouldn't say that TornadoCash was ever really decentralized service, same way like Uniswap and other junk dex exchanges are not really dex, and until recently TornadoCash was closed source.
Imagine how ''decentralized'' ethereum is, when you can freeze all tokens by centralized authority, like in case with USDC stableshitcoin.
One more bad thing about TornadoCash is that it was unusable when transaction fees was higher in ethereum.

Github is actually owned by microsoft pricks, but there are better alternatives like Gitlab that are harder to shut down, and code can be forked anywhere or self hosted.
Real danger with this is that someone could start malicious version of TornadoCash fork to scam and steal money from people.

You don't need government action and you don't even need an actual move from google for making things worse, just a bot automatically accepting a scammer DMCA attempt, and there you have it (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1935098.msg59862879#msg59862879). As for actually shutting down, chipmixer isn't at this point accessible over tor, of course, tor was under attack too but the timing of those events is a bit unsettling.


Don't trust a single review website other than the bitcointalk link, most are set up by scammers and are actually linking to fake addresses, we've had enough examples to date of such things.

Of course, i know that. But the thing is newbies doesn't know about that that's why they end up using google. Unfortunately, bitcointalk topics/links doesnt show in the google first all the times. Even the website on google's first result using the "chipmixer review" keyword has fake chipmixer link.

Many popular centralized crypto exchanges already have certain taint algorithms in place even without this newest attack on privacy. Depending on how they look at things, funds that originate from mixers, coinjoins, and gambling platforms are/could be considered as dirty and unwanted.

Check out [Blacklist] of unreliable, 'taint proclaiming' Bitcoin services / exchanges (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5401468.0) or What Do Centralized Exchanges Consider as Taint (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5398316.0) for more information.

One way around that is using decentralized alternatives such as Bisq where bitcoin retains its fungibility.   

What I mean is, if the site was shutdown and we can't access it via google, does using Tor is still possible? But after think it few times, I think I take it wrong. Any browsers are same, if the site isn't active anymore, using any browsers will have same result since the server can't be connected, correct?

Well, that's make me worried if they're start looking for Bitcoin mixer especially Chipmixer is the biggest Bitcoin mixer. Does it possible for Chipmixer to immune about this problem?

If a site is down, you can't access it no matter what browser you use. It's not a browser thing. Google can blacklist ChipMixer or any other service from showing up in their search results. You can test that yourself. Type and search for "ChipMixer" and see what results you are shown. The sites recommended to you are fake phishing sites, but Google doesn't care. But despite it not showing up in search results, you can still open https://chipmixer.com/ with Google Chrome just fine.

Yes, it will be down across all browsers. All you might be able to access is a cached offline version of the site (maybe).

Hard to say. Other mixers have been taken down in the past. When those in power start considering something a threat, there is no telling what its future will be like.

I am not quite certain how Tornado Cash works as a mixer and I will not assume that Ethereum validators can trace where the mixed coins have been sent. Show your analysis with data to prove your claim.

I am also not talking about sending mixed coins to my own account in an exchange. I said send them to exchanges' hot wallets or Vitalik's wallet or also someone can send them to your wallet. What can the government do? They cannot enforce this ban.

https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2019/12/26/binance-blockade-of-wasabi-wallet-could-point-to-a-crypto-crack-up/
https://slowmist.medium.com/slowmist-aml-tracking-funds-laundered-by-tornado-cash-3a0e1f637054

its not completely anonymous, it will just help the transaction hard to trace.
Probably US and EU are monitoring tornado cash very hard now since it is being used by N.Korean hackers.

It is both amusing and bothering how things escalated rather quickly on this issue. There was a significant domino effect after the treasury department imposed the blacklist on Tornado Cash. It is rather worrying how the rest easily and quickly bowed down after the decision was meted. Circle immediately took voluntary steps in compliance with the decision. Github followed suit. There might be more to follow. It seems statements of resistance are only coming from individuals when this is obviously a blanket attack on the right to privacy and to be anonymous.

They can't. Dude is clueless saying that "ERC20 tokens are centralized".

When you deposit into Tornado.cash, it generates you a private note (like a private key enabling these funds to be withdrawn later). You just use the private note to withdraw with a different address. No one can see which address was responsible for depositing the amount you took out later.

Let's pose the question in a different light: Bob has so much cryptocurrency that he cannot liquidate it all, so he tries to defraud Alice by doing a transaction with her for Tornado Cash ETH in return.

Or, Bob could target exchanges by identifying the hot wallet addresses of exchanges, mixes some of the coins with Tornado Cash and then directly sending them to said hot wallets. For maximum damage, Bob would send the coins to an identified cold wallet instead.

Of course the coins will be permanently lost, but that's not the point here. Now FTX, Coinbase and co. would be in trouble in government eyes since their hot (or cold, or lukewarm!) wallet addresses are now mixed up with Tornado Cash coins. They would most likely be hit with fines, but smaller exchanges could collapse in a black hole altogether. The only effect this would have on the market would be dragging down prices severely.

Do you think ethereum tokens are really decentralized?
How then it is possible to freeze tokens like USDC by some central authority, and make them unusable?
To add the fact that ethereum is switching to PoS that is totally centralized, they already reversed blockchain, almost nobody runs ethereum full nodes, and most wallets use Infura that is blacklisting transactions, etc.
Seems very centralized to me, but don't worry here comes CZ and Justin Sun to the rescue supporting new ''revolutionary'' shitcoin fork ETHW ;)

Having said that, I don't see certain president son being blacklisted for anything he did, so I don't support blacklisting something you can't track and tax, especially if it improves privacy.

I admit I don't know how tornado cash work since I never use it and there's no reason I need to use since I don't believe not reputable mixer.

But I don't think I'm clueless by saying that's part, now what's your opinion about those thing below that raise my concern about tornado cash.

1. AFAIK they don't have an onion address, this mean the users is using a bad privacy browsers that wouldn't protect their privacy for completely 100%.
2. If U.S. can know the tokens are come from tornado cash, this mean there must a be a vulnerability or a thing has been founded by a crypto analysis.
3. Why did tornado cash reveal their smart contract to public? 0x722122dF12D4e14e13Ac3b6895a86e84145b6967 (https://etherscan.io/address/0x722122df12d4e14e13ac3b6895a86e84145b6967)
4. Although this talk about Bitcoin mixing services (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5117328.0) I believe tornado cash wouldn't have better mixing technique than the Bitcoin mixing, I've read if a poor mixer will leave a trace about "pattern transaction" that can be easy to distinguish between exchange transaction and mixing transaction.

You are mixing stuff here.

1. ERC20 is a pattern, which does NOT include the ability to freeze tokens or "a central authority".
2. ERC20 tokens CAN be frozen IF the contract includes the necessary functions, which is only the case for a few tokens (such as USDC).
3. Saying that "ERC20 tokens" are centralized because USDC can be frozen is plain wrong.
4. ETH migrating to PoS is a different discussion. It didn't happen yet, so why are ERC20 centralized and how?

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They do.

This is false. All tokens are stored in a pool (smart contract), which is how they can say "all tokens in this central address are sanctioned".

Why wouldn't they? Do you think users should just trust an unverified contract? Are you aware that by using an unverified contract, you are just trusting the deployer who could have added a backdoor function to siphon funds?

This is irrelevant. Otherwise, one could also say ChipMixer is bad because you can easily distinguish their chips from "regular" transactions.

There might be something users can do to make this more difficult for the government to enforce. There was someone in social media who suggested that you can use renBTC to bridge your coins from Tornado into the bitcoin blockchain and trade to Monero then back to Ethereum from there hehehehe.

Developers can fork Tornado Cash with new contracts and new public addresses.

Apparently, one of the developers just got arrested in the Netherlands: https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/08/12/netherlands-arrests-suspected-tornado-cash-developer/

The article doesn't say much so I could be wrong here, but I'm guessing this has nothing to do with him writing code?

The reason for this is exactly what you can guess: they have arrested him because of this involvement in Tornado Cash development.

A good read here:
U.S. Treasury sanction of privacy tools places sweeping restrictions on all Americans (https://www.coincenter.org/u-s-treasury-sanction-of-privacy-tools-places-sweeping-restrictions-on-all-americans/)

This is dangerous nonsense.

ERC20 is JUNK, anyone can create one and make whatever rules they want.
You didn't inspect code of every token and you can't be sure what tokens can be frozen, but most stable coins can be frozen.

And USDT and probably more tokens, that means that anyone will try to swap other shit ERC20 to stable coins if they want to cash out.
Look
One more ''nice'' example how Curve tokens can be frozen from fake defi hack:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/binance-recovers-the-majority-of-funds-stolen-from-curve-finance

No it's not.
If USDC can be frozen than anything can be frozen, and honestly I don't care at all about other ERC20.
I am sure that fake Bitcoin on ERC20 can also be frozen and it is centralized....prove me wrong.

Dude common...do your own research.
If you think that ethereum and all it's tokens are decentralized with all nodes running on VPS, than you don't understand what decentralization is.
I mean if you enjoy using this crap, go for it, it's just my own opinion based on facts.

Yeah, good luck convincing the guys with the handcuffs and the guns about this as it seems they don't give a damn.

I always tried to tell people they should be really waking up and just because they are defining for their own what is financial transactions, what is copyright, what is code, and what is anything else, it kind of stops being important when the other guys that don't agree with you have all the power. Just like the $5 wrench attack vs the sha256 encryption meme, there is a really dangerous reality we might face, and hiding behind definitions won't save you when the others have their own.

But the biggest danger is that I can see how this is going to end, some will become enraged, some will scream, some will thread with x and z and one month later nobody will care till the next guy is getting thrown in jail.
Also, speaking of nonsense, I just saw this tweet:

https://i.imgur.com/2JlA9LW.png

The mixer channels continue to disappear, the Discord channel was deleted along with the Tornado Cash management forum, the mixer website is not available, the twitter account has not yet been deleted, the telegram channel is also online, but it seems that it is a matter of time.

https://www.theblock.co/post/163228/tornado-cashs-discord-server-and-governance-forum-shuttered-amid-arrest

Something like "illegal code"

This is a dangerous territory,  and I believe in future we may see regulations over cryptography, saying what someone may code and what nobody can code.

This is called liberty to create and deploy whatever contract anyone wants, with whatever code anyone wants.

But no, ERC20 is not limited to "stable coins" or to include blacklisting-related functions, so whatever you're saying here is just wrong. :P :D

So "ERC20 is centralized" because you think most people need to swap to USDT to cash out? ???

Yes, stablecoins, like we both already said. Not "Curve tokens".

It literally is.

Literally false.

That's you. Doesn't change the fact that ERC20, by default, can't be frozen. And most ERC20 tokens DO NOT include the function to freeze (blacklist) addresses.

What is "fake Bitcoin on ERC20"?

WBTC = custodied by BitGo. Can't be frozen on the contract level, but they can decline to convert your WBTC to BTC.
renBTC = AFAIK, can't be frozen and is custodied by REN nodes.

Honestly, the fact that you are claiming "Ethereum token are not really decentralized" without much evidence shows that you should do your own research. This sounds like the typical "muh ETH is bad" mumble jumble. I don't even own any ERC20, but this is just lazy thinking.

This is what I fear going forward.
I bet there is a big bunch of people in thinking “nothing to hide, nothing to fear”.
This nonsense and dangerous uncharted territory.

It’s time to bring up again a very important guide on why privacy is an incredibly valuable asset to preserve

A Treatise on Bitcoin and Privacy (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5271127)

https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/12/suspected-tornado-cash-developer-arrested-in-amsterdam/

EU and US governments working hard to take down such services, probably they will target next are the privacy coins.

*
anyways im going to short TORN now.

Agreed. This might be something similar to an attack vs. free speech.

This is clearly head shaking. The government's argument for the sanction is because many criminals use Tornado Cash which is not enough as valid argument because there are many things in this world that normal people use, are also used by criminals. Should the DOJ ban cars also?

An unfortunate update: A 29-year old man who was suspected to be a developer of Tornado Cash was arrested and detained in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. This followed after the US Treasury Department blacklisted the Ethereum mixer for being used for money laundering.

This is worrisome because the man, assuming he's indeed the developer of Tornado Cash, was just writing codes, codes that are never meant to help criminals. It was for privacy's sake. Privacy is a right. If his open source code was utilized by evil entities for evil purposes, is it his fault? Is he a criminal simply because somebody else took advantage of his neutral codes?

This is unfair and illogical. This line of reasoning would have the creators of the internet, browsers, smart phones, and even knives, slippers, pillows, packaging tapes, freezers, and other neutral tools arrested for having their inventions used in crimes.

---

Source:
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/12/dutch-detain-suspected-developer-of-crypto-mixer-tornado-cash.html

We have witnessed the founders of Celsius and Voyager scam their users and they are not arrested. They might have also made much money. Similar situation with other founders like Luna founder Do Kwon or Spell founder Sifu. However, a developer for a dapp that protects privacy is in prison.

@ETFbitcoin. It was cleary a question for the purpose of supporting the argument only hehehehe.

Also, on the 1990s case, was it in America? Was it also when it was declared that code is speech and also protected by the first amendment?

States is revolting parasites.
Now they show their true colours.

If money is not fungible, then it implies that you need state's permission to use money, i.e, act as a human being. Therefore, its not your money.

Random piece of news stating the guy was arrested not as a TC developer but because he was actively involved in cash recycling.
Not that this changes much in the situation, but it is only a bit less worrying as he wasn't arrested for only writing code.

So it means that a group of whales can attack a certain wallet that holds huge fund on a DeFi by sending tainted tokens coming from Tornado cash. I saw a random post on twitter about this kind of scenario. I was wondering how will DeFi handle this kind of attack to major wallet that has investment with them.  ;D

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/14/blob65297cc5421768d3.jpeg

Tokens are not fungible , like eth and btc.

Tokens can be freeze by the central authority which created them (if specified in the contract,  which usually is for stablecoins)

If the Tokens are really "tainted", they are probably already frozen. If not  they are still worth money

Do you have a link to it? I was thinking that something along those lines was what happened.

Although not 100% the same it goes to the automotive world of emission control defeating devices. They are 100% legal to buy / sell / own / design / build and so on. You just cannot use them on any car that is run on public roads.

I see a lot more of this happening over time since a lot, could even be most or all of code that does mixing is open source. It's pointless to even bother with the developers. You go after the people running it and making money from it.

-Dave

Can you post source link for this information and how exactly did they found him?
It's funny coincidence that in the same time this arrest happened, lot of github accounts with tornado cash code contribution got deleted/banned.
So writing source code was obviously a big problem for someone when he had to do all this, and maybe this is not so important but in July Tornado Cash Classic UI became fully open-source

It should not change anything because he was really being arrested for writing code for protection and enhancement of privacy and they presently are using mainstream media news to make it appear that he is a money launderer and a criminal hehehe. This is head shaking. Cryptospace developers should go back to being anonymous.


Is it Bernstein vs. the Department of Justice?

Apparently this is the reason.
The fact he was a TC developers has little to do with the arrest. The reason why he was arrested is because money laundering:

Alleged Crypto Ransomware Money Launderer Extradited to US (https://blockworks.co/alleged-crypto-ransomware-money-launderer-extradited-to-us/)

This means he was directly involved in the money laundering, not only providing the TC protocol.

Then, we can discuss why/if money laundering is a criminal offence or not.

I was curious about something when I read the DOJ release:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/alleged-russian-money-launderer-extradited-netherlands-us


The first question that came to mind, was when was tornadocash launched and, no surprise, "Tornado Cash was launched in August 2019 ".
So, I think that there is another important thing that might have to be discussed although we will probably never know:
- Was tornadocash compromised since launch and it didn't offer the claimed privacy at all?
I have a really bad feeling about this, I can remember how the alpha bay then hansa market episode went.

Dear lord.
This would be so worrisome.
But in the end, having a protocol completely unlinked from a central entity, as also the Wasabi saga showed, is of utter importance for the privacy of the users.

TC being a rotten product acting only as a shell for proper laundering operation would be a disastrous outcome for every privacy inspired user.

Pretty sure this guy was arrested earlier. I think there's actually two people of age 29 that got arrested, one of whom being the developer of TC.

You can use google  (https://hackernoon.com/the-magic-of-zero-knowledge-proofs-through-the-source-code-of-tornado-cash)?
I'm pretty sure at least some people have audited the contract code since then. Tornado cash was fully decentralized, non-custodial, unlike most of these garbage mixers. perhaps there is a way to backdoor the cryptography they use (zk-snark), no idea.

Another worrying aspect is the fact that Tornado Cash has been deleted by GitHub.
Please remember GitHub hosts also Bitcoin Core code.

Nothing really that can potentially stop Bitcoin, but once again. it's a slippery slope.


Reference:

'It Doesn’t Change Anything' Says Tornado Cash After Code Disappears From GitHub (https://decrypt.co/107053/it-doesnt-change-anything-says-tornado-cash-code-disappears-github)

There is nothing really special about github except the fact that most people got used to using it, but knowing that microsoft purchased it should make people switch to some alternative, and Git is already decentralized.
It's not that hard to self host bitcoin code, but for start t would be smart to make cloned code to Gitlab, Gitea or Gogs that are all open source.
They would really have to switch off internet if they want to stop Bitcoin, but they can much easier control shitcoins and PoS coins.

As I said, there are many other alternatives to GitHub, and probably we will soon have some kind of decentralized web (something built on Holepunch maybe?).
But the idea that a code can be taken down without being used only for fraudulent activities is a very worrying aspect of the centralization of Github. We all shall start thinking about alternatives (thinking about Bitcoin Core repository).

Someone correct me if I am wrong, pardon my not so technical knowledge background.

How is a service that's "fully decentralized", not have an option for a tor version or even have an option for one to run their own node and run a network of a censorship resistant decentralized service? I mean as soon as the sanction came into play, the main website went offline, default RPC protocols blocked, GitHub deleted, etc

Guess what? It wasn’t decentralised.
As wasabi debacle showed, fully decentralised, censorship resistant, privacy preserving reliable mixers are still to come.

GitHub and Discord servers being taken down is a different (sad) story, involving our trust toward platforms should be neutral.

Tornado Cash's contract is still up and running, that's where the decentralization comes from. You could claim that it's too hard to run your own Ethereum node (for the RPC access) and host your own copy of their frontend, but this is still possible.

I just found some interesting information that I would like to share

Nearly 41% of all aether addresses have been 2 hops from Tornado cash. More than 90% 4 gopa from it.


This proves how it is impossible to accuse people just because they use mixers . And how easy it is to just make 4 transactions and become "clean"

Protecting privacy isn’t a crime.
The huge majority of mixing services are doing mixes because of perfectly legitimate reasons.
I am happy to see that many users are using mixers: it should be a default way of doing transactions (and soon it will be with Cross Input Signature Aggregation).

I agree that contract is still up and running, but of what use is it if an average Joe can not access the platform to mix his Ether?

Where is the said contract going to get volumes of ETH so that it's possible to obfuscate them and thus make it a fully functional decentralized mixer that anyone can access?

IMO, I believe decentralization becomes more meaningful when it involves masses as well, just like what we are seeing with Bitcoin right now  ;)

Users can also interact with the smart contracts directly without the front end. Those smart contracts are also immutable because the ownership has been renounced.

Also, it has begun. Blocking addresses is expected from centralized exchanges, however, a Defi exchange is also blocking addresses that connects to Tornado Cash hehehe. This is head shaking. They might be very afraid of being arrested and given a lawsuit for moneylaundering.



Uniswap the Decentralised exchange has blocked 253 crypto addresses over the last four months that it worked with TRM Labs, which is a blockchain analytics firm. The reason behind the blocking was tied to connections with stolen funds.

This makes it the first ever time Uniswap disclosed data which is related to wallet blacklisting. These stolen funds were related to transaction mixing services that included Tornado Cash which was received as sanction from the US Treasury.

Source https://bitcoinist.com/uniswap-blocked-253-crypto-addresses-heres-why/

Yes, the problem is that some of these are already being blocked on the RPC level. So if you use Infura or Alchemy (which are the default on Metamask), you can't interact with the smart contract. You would need to find a free RPC or run your own.

There is also an open source browser extension that intercepts and bypasses the requests responsible for checking if your address is dirty/sanctioned: https://github.com/qd-qd/pineapple

News update.

A small group of people from the cryptospace community and what appears to also be from the opensource development community are starting to organize themselves to protest against the arrest of Alex Pertsev.

Everyone can sign the petition in their change.org page.

https://www.change.org/p/open-source-development-is-in-danger-take-action-before-it-s-too-late-opensourcenotacrime-privacynotacrime-freealex-freepertsev-freealekseypertsev

If you are in Amsterdam, you can join the rally.

https://www.meetup.com/cryptocanal/events/287867009



The global crypto community is spearheading a campaign to raise awareness about Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev’s arrest earlier this month.

The supporters of Alexey Pertsev, the top contributor to Tornado Cash’s open-source code, have raised 2,070 signatures in a petition to free him as part of a campaign to raise awareness about his recent arrest and its potential impact on the future of open-source software. Netherlands’ Fiscal Information and Investigation Service sparked outrage in the crypto community after arresting Pertsev in Amsterdam on August 10—two days after the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Tornado Cash—on suspicion of “involvement in concealing criminal financial flows and facilitating money laundering.”

Despite the significant outcry from the global crypto and open-source communities, Dutch authorities haven’t yet revealed the laws Pertsev has allegedly broken. According to a statement shared by crypto policy and advocacy group DeFi Education Fund, the Fiscal Information and Investigation Service thinks that Tornado Cash was created solely for money laundering. “About the concerns, the development of a tool is not prohibited, but if a tool has been created for the purpose of committing criminal acts, for example to conceal criminal flows of money, then putting online/making available a developed tool may be punishable,” the agency told the DeFi Education Fund in an email response.

Source https://cryptobriefing.com/crypto-fans-launch-campaign-arrested-tornado-cash-developer/

On Tether, this is an admirable act from them, however, this is risky for the cryptospace because the US treasury department might be given a reason to sanction them before law enforcement instruction can be given. This is only another speculation but it might presently be safer to hold another type of stablecoin or only hold bitcoin.



Tether Holds Firm on Decision Not To Freeze Tornado Cash Addresses, Awaits Law Enforcement Instruction

Tether works closely with law enforcement worldwide to assist in investigations, including freezing addresses. We are in almost daily contact with key law enforcement officers and pride ourselves on the timeliness with which we respond to their requests. When Tether receives an applicable/legitimate request from a verified law enforcement agent to freeze a privately held wallet, the Company complies with the freeze (we do not freeze wallets of exchanges/services).

Source https://tether.to/en/tether-holds-firm-on-decision-not-to-freeze-tornado-cash-addresses-awaits-law-enforcement-instruction/

According to this Dune analytics dashboard page by a user called @phabc, Tether has banned 716 addreses already with $420 million of USDT held by the addresses in total. Circle has banned 82 addresses with $4 million held in total.

We can use this information if there are updates on Tether and if Paolo will wait for instruction from the government concerning funds that came from Tornado Cash.

https://dune.com/phabc