Tornado Cash, a cryptocurrency “mixer” designed to make the monitoring of cryptocurrency transactions more difficult, was sanctioned by the Biden administration and illegal because of its use by facilitating certain significant money laundering. But Donald Trump, the president of cryptography, brought him back. The US Treasury Department announcement Friday, he will raise the sanctions against the Tornado trees, which allows him to use it again to anonymize cryptocurrency transactions.
Here is the fast and dirty story on Tornado Cash: the protocol was launched in 2019 so that cryptocurrency users obscure the property on the currency. You take “contaminated” money (that is to say, parts that have been identified and associated with a person), pass it into tornado species where it is divided, mixed in a larger swimming pool and has moved until it is actually “clean” and not identifiable. By 2022, he took the heat of the treasure department because it would have been used by malicious actors to whiten the stolen cryptocurrency as part of a hack.
Once the Biden Treasury Department has arrived at sink In August 2022, he accused TORNADO Cash for whitening of more than $ 7 billion, of which Almost $ 500 million The fact that the agency affirmed had been stolen by the piracy collective sponsored by the North the Lazare group. By sanctioning the protocol and its founder, the Biden administration has essentially made the use of Tornado Cash in the United States illegal.
It seems, however, that the sanctions were perhaps not so effective (and, according to a federal court, not so legal). A study found that the use of Tornado Cash continued to climb despite its placement on the black list. And last year, a federal court of appeal judge The fact that the Treasury has overestimated its legal authority by sanctioning the protocol – a result which has been obtained because the black list is designed to punish foreign entities, and the torade, which operates independently via self -executing intelligent contracts, is not owned or operated by a foreign national.
This brings us to today, when the Trump administration officially increases the Restrictions on the Tornado Cash, which allows it to operate again in the United States. The crypto certainly celebrate the movement, call It is a victory for “privacy”. Others, such as the member of the Democrating Congress Sean Casten, called that “One of the most dangerous and irresponsible things coming out of Trump’s White House.”
Casten could go there a little; As a rule, additional intimacy is a good thing even if it means that some people could use it with maliciousness, such as encrypted messaging. Of course, there is an argument that the average person used for encrypted messaging and a cryptographic cup is essentially useful only for criminal activity. But there is a world in which it does not really matter anyway: the tools to trace activity on the channel, even those who are going through efforts to hide details, become more sophisticated and Some experts believe Transactions on cash in cash can already be traced with enough effort.
