US Removes Tornado Cash Sanctions

The U.S. Treasury Department's sanctions watchdog removed cryptocurrency mixing tool Tornado Cash from its global blacklist on Friday, following a federal appeals court ruling last November that the Office of Foreign Asset Control couldn't sanction its smart contracts. Despite the delisting of over 100 Ethereum addresses from the Specially Designated Nationals list, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent emphasized continuing concerns about North Korea's digital asset theft operations.

"We remain deeply concerned about the significant state-sponsored hacking and money laundering campaign aimed at stealing, acquiring, and deploying digital assets for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea," Treasury stated. Roman Storm, Tornado Cash co-founder, still faces a July criminal trial for his alleged development role. A Treasury court filing Monday had warned that completely lifting sanctions could have "significantly disruptive consequences for national security."

Fills a need

[abulafia]

Those in Donnie's orbit think they're going to need a good shitcoin laundry soon.

Re:Fills a need

[PubJeezy]

I think it's silly to pretend Donnie is a cartel leader as opposed to a well-handled mafia front man but I agree with your general premise. Except one thing, it's not longer a viable platform due to internal, government monitoring.

They're basically trying to gaslight a whole bunch of people into committing fraud by showing people like the president and elon getting away with crimes. But if folks use a platform that's already been opened up by the feds to clean their dirty money, they will be running from that moment for the rest of their lives.

There is no feasible technical reality in which Tornado cash is still an effective tool for criminals. It's clearly being run by the feds and while folks will be able to get away with their crypto crimes for another 3 years, those logs of illegal financial transactions will last forever.

Alexey Pertsev

[DrMrLordX]

The Netherlands put him away for five years last April. American influence was likely involved in their decision to prosecute. Is he going to get any relief now that Treasury has lifted sanctions on Tornado Cash?

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

Roman Storm, one of the co-founders of Tornado Cash, faces a criminal trial this July over his alleged role developing the smart contracts and protocols. Another developer was charged but has not yet been arrested. After the Fifth Circuit's November ruling, Storm's lawyers filed a motion requesting the court reconsider its earlier decision to deny the dismissal of charges against him. That motion was smacked down in February, with Judge Katherine Polk Failla of the Southern District of New York (SDNY) argui

Re:

[DrMrLordX]

That doesn't make any sense. But that does answer my question.

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

Is he going to get any relief now that Treasury has lifted sanctions on Tornado Cash?

The situations are lined up pretty similarly, If you committed a crime even if that law is still rescinded later you still committed a crime. It's like the opposite of ex post facto.

He can appeal with this new info or he can try for a pardon but the lifting of the sanctions has nothing to do with anyone's criminal trial.

Scammers gonna scam

[TheMiddleRoad]

Scams, illegal drugs, illegal guns, illegal porn, bribery, and other crimes are all crypto is good for.

Re:

[Iamthecheese]

Anything that works and can't be regulated is going to gather criminals first, obviously. That's not evidence it's only good for criminals. Note that there is a difference between criminal and evil behavior.

Re:Scammers gonna scam

[GameboyRMH]

I feel like you should've mentioned ransomware and international terrorism first rather than lumping them in with "other crimes." Ransomware is the headline act, the whole industry couldn't work at any meaningful scale without cryptocurrency.

Re:

[h33t l4x0r]

Ransomware amounts to maybe $1B per year, but that's compared to $1T of crypto in circulation, so calling it the headline act seems like a reach.

Re:Scammers gonna scam

[GameboyRMH]

I don't see why the total amount of cryptocurrency in circulation is relevant. It would be better to look at trade volumes. And this study found that from 2009-2017, a quarter of all Bitcoin trading was related to criminal activity:

https://www.uts.edu.au/about/f... [uts.edu.au]

And that's through a system that offers zero inherent anonymity, only pseudonymity. We can expect that it would be far worse for cryptocurrencies that can do anonymous transactions.

With 90%+ of non-illegal trades being wash trading, legal and legitimate uses of cryptocurrency are likely a tiny niche use:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]

Re:

[h33t l4x0r]

Those numbers seem reasonable but that was pre-trading. USDT didn't even exist for most of that period.

Don't forget the good crimes

[virtig01]

Facilitating crime is only a bad thing if the crimes are bad.

Billions of people in the world live under oppressive monetary regimes, with governments forcing people to save and spend in a local currency that the government devalues overnight (Zimbabwe, Egypt, Nigeria [bbc.com]). Transacting in USD or some other stable currency is illegal. Bitcoin allows them a way out, as it's permissionless and hard to stop. These people using Bitcoin are able to prevent their government from stealing their savings.

As for illegal dr

Re:

[TheMiddleRoad]

Bitcoin is useful when government acts evil, and people need to counteract evil government? Better to directly fight the evil government instead of running like cowards and allowing the government to strengthen and grow more evil.

People aren't buying mifepristone with crypto. I'd expect the drug is just being shipped to them for free in Africa. Again, this is about countering government evil buy skirting the law instead of just directly dealing with an evil government.

As for Nigeria, those crypto "invest

Trump does not care about justice

[Anonymous Coward]

And those who work for the justice department and there hard work of enforcing the law. The result is going to be law enforcement not caring, after all why would you work years to enforce the law and then have the POTUS undo all your work in 1 day. Most good leaders think about what they are going to do before they make a decision and the ramifications of what it will do to the system, not this POTUS.

Re:

[Kernel Kurtz]

Gives a whole new meaning to move fast and break things heh?

Re:Trump does not care about justice

[stabiesoft]

And unfortunately, the behavior will have a very long tail. Many real law enforcement employees are either going to quit or be so demoralized that it will take years to recover. And that is assuming trump doesn't find a way to stay in office. https://www.yahoo.com/news/ste... [yahoo.com] Or we might get really lucky he chokes on a chicken bone or just dies of old age and his term is cut short. I don't see the VP having the ability to break the law willy nilly like trump. On the reverse, if you look at Putin and Erdogan, they both just ignore the law and stay in power doing whatever is needed. Trump if he lives that long has two mentors to look to for methods. Arresting your opponent seems to be one of the goto methods.

Re:

[laughingskeptic]

Even before Trump, most known white collar crime went unpunished because the FBI and Justice department employees do not want to damage their careers by spending years on cases involving paperwork and when winning or losing may hinge on convincing the jury of the significance of something like a spreadsheet. (I'm paraphrasing what I have been told by multiple FBI agents).

If white collar crime was routinely punished then Trump would have spent his life behind bars rather than how he has. Anyone who can

court ruling last November

[darkshadow]

, following a federal appeals court ruling last November that the Office of Foreign Asset Control couldn't sanction its smart contracts.

Tornado Cash?

[necro81]

And here I though the article was talking about one of those money booths [youtube.com] with bills flying around. Turns out they were talking about a different scam.

Re:

[rossdee]

I thought it must have been about emergency funds from FEMA to house people after weather disasters...

Explain like I'm five ..

[Mirnotoriety]

Explain like I'm five what's going on here.

"Vacating the designation of Tornado Cash in its entirety could have significantly 'disruptive consequences' for national security and law enforcement"

Does he mean the spooks are using it for financing off-book operations?