US Treasury Blacklists Tornado Cash Mixer

Article Reading Time:
2 minutes.

One of the most popular ETH mixers, Tornado Cash, has been sanctioned by the US Treasury Department as hackers continue to use the platform.

US Department of Economics and TreasuryAccording to the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the popular Ethereum mixing service Tornado Cash has been sanctioned. The platform address and many Ethereum addresses have been blacklisted and now Americans will not be able to use the mixer or make transactions with sanctioned addresses.

The ministry announcement listedSeveral Ethereum addresses associated with the Tornado Cash community, including ones where people could donate funds to the platform. According to Nansen researcher Andrew Thurman, the list of banned addresses also includes an address belonging to the open source project funding platform Gitcoin.

The Ministry of Finance stated that it accepted thesemeasures because criminals were using Tornado Cash to launder money. The state body also added that the famous North Korean hacker group Lazarus Group used Tornado Cash to launder more than $96 million after the Harmony Bridge hack in June, in which hackers stole about $100 million.

Tornado Cash stated back in April thatuses the blockchain analysis tool Chainalysis to prevent the anonymization of addresses on the sanctions list. However, Treasury Undersecretary for Counterterrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson said Tornado Cash repeatedly ignored effective controls designed to prevent cybercriminals from laundering funds.

Let us recall that the first cryptocurrency mixer included in the US sanctions list was Blender. In May, OFAC blocked the site due to the fact that it was also used by North Korean hackers.