@PrimeNumber7. The developer of Tornado Cash is the person being held in a prison for charges the government are not quite certain what. This might end in something similar to Ross Ulbricht where it was possible that the judge, the jury and everyone working in the court knew already what type of sentence was going to be given.
In any case, have these type of sanctions gone to the extreme? Clearly yes.
It also appears that Ethereum users will need an application to know if certain coins came from Tornado Cash hehehehe.
On Wednesday, David Hoffman, a crypto evangelist and host of the popular industry podcast Bankless, filed suit against the Treasury Department over sanctions it issued earlier this year against Tornado Cash, a tool that anonymizes cryptocurrency transactions. (Coin Center, a think tank for the industry, joined him in the suit.) According to the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, the department’s sanctioning arm, the blacklisting is a response to the Lazarus Group, the North Korean hacking army it claims has stolen and laundered some $500 million. The problem, though, is that Tornado Cash isn’t a company or a person — it’s code that lives on the ethereum blockchain, and there’s no way for anyone to control or destroy the protocol. Since Tornado Cash isn’t an entity, it can’t appeal. It’s up to people like Hoffman, who claims he may be forced to affirm every year that he’s not a criminal — not because he has used it or has some connection to North Korea, but because he once had someone send him money using Tornado Cash.
Source https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/have-u-s-crypto-sanctions-gone-too-far.html
If sanctions are being placed on an entity that does not exist, it is a statutory defect. In any case, have these type of sanctions gone to the extreme? Clearly yes.
It also appears that Ethereum users will need an application to know if certain coins came from Tornado Cash hehehehe.
On Wednesday, David Hoffman, a crypto evangelist and host of the popular industry podcast Bankless, filed suit against the Treasury Department over sanctions it issued earlier this year against Tornado Cash, a tool that anonymizes cryptocurrency transactions. (Coin Center, a think tank for the industry, joined him in the suit.) According to the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, the department’s sanctioning arm, the blacklisting is a response to the Lazarus Group, the North Korean hacking army it claims has stolen and laundered some $500 million. The problem, though, is that Tornado Cash isn’t a company or a person — it’s code that lives on the ethereum blockchain, and there’s no way for anyone to control or destroy the protocol. Since Tornado Cash isn’t an entity, it can’t appeal. It’s up to people like Hoffman, who claims he may be forced to affirm every year that he’s not a criminal — not because he has used it or has some connection to North Korea, but because he once had someone send him money using Tornado Cash.
Source https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/have-u-s-crypto-sanctions-gone-too-far.html
There are many cases in which the outcome is clear to most involved in the case because the evidence is clear. The evidence against Ulbright was strong, and there is additionally evidence that Ulbright knew what he was doing was going to result in a long prison sentence if he was caught. I think the law is less clear in the case of Tornado Cash.
My argument was more about the treatment of the government on the defendant. I would speculate that if a mixing protocol developer would become very popular the treatment would be something similar to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
In any case, what is the government of Netherlands demanding from the Tornado Cash developer? Do they want him to publish a statement and condemn his own project? There was a mixer before that did this hehehehe.
