Topic: Tornado Cash: A Privacy Mixer on Ethereum? (Read 644 times)

https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/07/15/tornado-cash-co-founder-alexey-pertsev-denied-bail-by-dutch-court/

Tornado Cash Co-Founder Alexey Pertsev Denied Bail by Dutch Court
"Pertsev sought bail to allow him to prepare for his appeal to the verdict in May which found him guilty of money laundering.
Alexey Pertsev was denied bail by a Dutch court on Friday, according to DLNews.
Pertsev's lawyers were seeking bail to allow the Russian to prepare for his appeals process"

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In Russia, there is such a term as “social justice” in prison punishment. If the sentence is passed, appeals will be useless unless there are very serious grounds.
This means that a convicted person must spend 50-70% of the court-ordered term in prison and have no violations in order to qualify for a transfer to a penal colony with milder conditions or to qualify for conditional early release.

https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/05/14/tornado-cash-developer-alexey-pertsev-found-guilty-of-money-laundering/
Tornado Cash Developer Alexey Pertsev Found Guilty, Sentenced to 64 Months in Prison by Dutch Court

"Alexey Pertsev was first jailed in the Netherlands in August 2022.
Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev was sentenced to 64 months in jail for money laundering
"Tornado Cash does not pose any barrier for people with criminal assets who want to launder them," according to the translated verdict seen by CoinDesk."

https://cointelegraph.com/news/tornado-cash-roman-storm-dismiss-charges-money-laundering
Tornado Cash co-founder requests dismissal of money laundering charges
"Roman Storm’s lawyers argued that the charges are “fatally flawed” and must be dismissed, given “there was nothing” Storm could have done to prevent sanctioned entities from using the crypto mixer.
Roman Storm, co-founder of cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash, has filed a motion to dismiss all three charges against him that allege he operated a money laundering business and violated the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

“By no stretch can Mr. Storm be deemed to have conspired to launder funds,” Storm’s lawyers stated in a March 29 filing in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Storm’s lawyers argued that Tornado Cash was developed, “became immutable” and publicly available before it was used by the hacking groups sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

Therefore, by the time of the alleged misconduct, there was allegedly little that Storm could do to prevent a “sanctioned entity from using it.”

The charges are centered around Tornado Cash allegedly facilitating the efforts of the North Korean Lazarus Group bypassing U.S. sanctions, allowing the country’s regime to reportedly fund its nuclear program."

Absolutely right.

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Meanwhile, I take back my past statement. It looks like America's Most hated hackers, the Lazarus group, have been bombarding other mixers with their stolen funds. One of those mixers was a bitcoin mixing service known as Yomix
It's just a matter of time before we hear about another Mixer seizure or sanction.

The mixer web interface does not work, but the smart contract will live as long as the blockchain is running.

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https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/03/27/dutch-prosecutors-seek-64-month-jail-sentence-for-tornado-cash-dev-alexey-pertsev/
Dutch Prosecutors Seek 64-Month Jail Sentence for Tornado Cash Dev Alexey Pertsev
The judge will deliver the verdict on May 14, the court said.
"Prosecutors seek to sentence Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev to 64 months in jail, members of their team told CoinDesk.
The consequences of the trial could have wider implications on how developers of open-source projects are treated."

So the mixer still works after all 
I remember having an argument with someone who claimed that the mixer was no longer functional. What he didn't probably know is that it's a smart contract of sorts, which is immutable as long as the blockchain it's built on is working.

It however looks like the hackers don't know about the existence of other reliable bitcoin mixers?

https://www.elliptic.co/blog/north-korean-hackers-return-to-tornado-cash-despite-sanctions
North Korean hackers return to Tornado Cash despite sanctions

"$112.5 million was stolen from exchange HTX and its HECO cross-chain bridge in November 2023 - Elliptic has attributed this hack to North Korea’s Lazarus Group
Over the past day, over $23 million from this hack has been laundered through Tornado Cash
Lazarus turned to Sinbad.io as its mixer of choice following sanctions on Tornado Cash in August 2022, but this service was seized by US authorities in November 2023"


Alexey Pertsev accused of laundering $1.2bn at Tornado Cash, says Dutch indictment
https://www.dlnews.com/articles/people-culture/alexey-pertsev-accused-of-laundering-1bn-at-tornado-cash/

Binance still plays a major part in the cryptocurrency scene, so the token delisting will surely affect the market. I believe due to regulatory pressure, even though it is not a direct way to adress this particular token, they feel pressured to delist such kind of token. Not to mention this particular platform is sanctioned and you know the story. So, it is likely they did it for purposes.

Regarding the token itself, surely the liquidity will not be like before, but if there are still an usecases within the platform, I'm sure the token will hold on.

That day they delisted a number of other tokens that also dumped so hard. The coins including waltonchain, Bitshares, PERL. I am not sure if the delisting comes at a time when Binance is under fire from the regulators, or this is just their routine.

I am actually surprised that TORN was still trading on the exchange after all this time.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/tornado-cash-token-falls-binance-announces-delisting
"Tornado Cash is a cryptocurrency mixing protocol, and TORN is used to vote on proposals for upgrading the protocol. From Nov. 26 to 27, the token took a nosedive, falling from $3.90 to just $1.66 — a decline of 57%. The price decline happened as the world’s largest crypto exchange by volume, Binance, announced that it would stop accepting deposits of TORN on Dec. 8 and no longer process withdrawals after March 7, 2024."
https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/tornado-cash

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/tornado-cash-founders-indicted-for-1b-crypto-laundering-1-arrest-1-at-large/ar-AA1fGRFr
Tornado Cash Founders Indicted For $1B Crypto Laundering — 1 Arrest, 1 At Large
"The founders of Tornado Cash, Roman Storm and Roman Semenov, have been indicted for allegedly operating a cryptocurrency mixer that laundered more than $1 billion, including funds from the notorious North Korean cybercrime group, Lazarus Group.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said that Tornado Cash was an infamous cryptocurrency mixer that laundered more than $1 billion in criminal proceeds and violated U.S. sanctions. "

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Roman Semenov was placed on OFAC’s sanctioned persons list, and Roman Storm was arrested as the United States continued its crackdown on the crypto mixer.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/tornado-cash-co-founders-charged-with-money-laundering-sanctions-violations-ofac



https://u.today/tornado-cash-reigns-supreme-on-ethereum
"Despite facing sanctions from the U.S. Treasury in August 2022, Tornado Cash continues to dominate as the premier crypto mixer on the Ethereum network.  Recent data from crypto analytics firm Arkham reveals that a staggering $77.35 million in assets passed through Tornado Cash contracts on the Ethereum Mainnet in just the last month.
An impressive comeback   The mixer, which operates across seven different chains, has made a name for itself by allowing users to obfuscate transfers of ten distinct crypto assets, with native ETH on the Ethereum mainnet being the most popular.  At its height in July 2021, Tornado Cash managed more than $700 million of ETH in its pool contracts. The platform did experience a significant setback post-sanctions, with assets plummeting by over 60% and a substantial decrease in transfer volume. "

A group of crypto investors and developers lost a lawsuit funded by Coinbase that sought to argue the U.S. Treasury Department overstepped its authority in sanctioning Tornado Cash, a mixing service designed to make crypto transactions anonymous.
Tornado Cash is an actual entity in itself, which has a property interest in its smart contracts, wrote Judge Robert Pitman, from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, on Thursday.
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/08/17/coinbase-backed-group-loses-lawsuit-arguing-tornado-cash-sanctions-overstepped-us-treasurys-authority/

It's a privacy mixer. You just make a list of the "rules" in this application and they'll set something like the following: **"you must not link the links on the application to another application,"** so if I want to use this "we have to check it first" and then if I don't like the link, I won't go into the application.

https://watcher.guru/news/tornado-cash-developer-alex-pertsev-to-be-released-from-prison
Tornado Cash Developer Alex Pertsev To Be Released From Prison
"Alex Pertsev, a developer of Tornado Cash, will soon be released from prison. Pertsev spent nearly nine months behind bars. The developer was detained by Dutch officials in August 2022. He was accused of participating in money laundering through the Tornado Cash cryptocurrency mixer.
According to reports, Pertsev will be released on April 26, which is also his birthday. However, the developer is far from being cleared of charges. Pertsev is currently facing suspended release under surveillance. He will be under surveillance while he awaits trial from home. Pertsev would be placed under surveillance with an ankle monitor during the suspended release period."

CEO Kraken Powell called the actions of the US Treasury Department to block Tornado Cash unconstitutional, according to him, and it's hard to disagree with him here, people have the right to financial confidentiality. The actions of the US Treasury Department were a reflection on the collapse of Terra Luna and occurred more likely mechanically than meaningfully.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-16/kraken-s-powell-calls-tornado-cash-shutdown-unconstitutional
            https://archive.ph/th6TE#selection-3627.44-3627.50

It is also reported that the Coin Center advocacy group is considering appealing the US sanctions against Tornado Cash in court because it believes that OFAC exceeded its authority by imposing sanctions against the "autonomous program code", and not against individuals.

https://twitter.com/jerrybrito/status/1559171083105976321

The following entity has been added to OFAC's SDN List:
https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/recent-actions/20220808



https://twitter.com/BowTiedIguana/status/1556683120002314241
"READ THIS THREAD OR GO TO JAIL FOR 30 YEARS (sorry not kidding)

Tornado Cash added to US sanctions list - $437m of assets blocked.

What is OFAC, what are sanctions, and what does this mean for DeFi 👇"

Yeah privacy protocol must do that in order to keep them safe from the regulators or even interpol. We do know that how many hackers and criminals are using this to mixing their ethereum that stolen from others. This is good to see that if they are blocking the address and it can't be moved to the somewhere. that means what have said by CEO of tornado cash was not true as they are still having control over this protocol. So, it's good to see that hacked have no way to withdraw their money.

The case related to the Ronin attack caused the most damage to the crypto industry to date, the amount of money stolen amounted to 622 million USD. Tornado claims to still respect the privacy of its users but will not stay silent before criminals, so it has decided to interfere in transactions related to the wallet address that attacked Ronin.
I think their decision is right, if no action is taken more criminals will take advantage of this loophole to directly launder illegal money.

This project called Tornado Cash was supposed to be a privacy coin but I heard they block a hacker's ETH address, should privacy coins be doing this? Haven't this move broken some protocol of this project and its utility itself?.

https://twitter.com/tornadocash/status/1514904975037669386?s=21
"Tornado Cash uses @chainalysis
 oracle contract to block OFAC sanctioned addresses from accessing the dapp.
Maintaining financial privacy is essential to preserving our freedom, however, it should not come at the cost of non-compliance."
https://en.ethereumworldnews.com/tornado-cash-blocks-ethereum-address-linked-to-axie-infinity-hack/