Tornado cash is also used for good causes, claims Vitalik Buterin as crypto community reacts to ban
Vitalik Buterin, one of the founders of the second leading cryptocurrency Ethereum, said he used the now sanctioned by the US government mixing service Tornado Cash.
“I want to appear as someone who has used TC [Tornado Cash] to donate to [Ukraine]Buterin wrote in a tweet earlier today, agree with another user who pointed out that services like Tornado Cash are often used for good causes like donating to help Ukraine.
“Wanting to donate to Ukraine is a good example of a valid need for financial privacy <...> On that note, curious if there are documented examples of TC being used for this,” Jeff Coleman, co-founder of Counterfactual, said on his Twitter.
Tornado Cash is a smart contract mixer built on Ethereum, which was banned by the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) yesterday.
According to the US Treasury Department, Tornado Cash “has been used to launder more than $7 billion in virtual currency since its creation in 2019,” including $455 million stolen by the Lazarus Group, a Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). ) state-sponsored hacker group.
Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Semenov shared that his GitHub account was suspended, along with a number of other TC resources, including Tornado Cash GitHub organization, smart contract addresses linked to Tornado Cash on Circle, Infuras RPC and others.
The ban led to a discussion around services such as Tornado Cash used for transactions in the crypto industry and their proper regulation.
Jerry Brito, an executive director of the Coin Center, a non-profit organization that works on policy issues facing cryptocurrencies, pointed out that the ban appears to be sanctioning a tool that is neutral and can be put to good or bad use like any other technology,” rather than taking action against a single person or agency.
Jake Chervinsky, a crypto lawyer and head of policy at the Blockchain Association, so that while the association supports the U.S. Treasury Department’s “mission to combat illegal activity in crypto,” they are at the same time concerned that the ban on the mixer “crosses a line that the U.S. government has always respected [and] should continue to uphold as a matter of good policy,” adding that this decision “to sanction <> a decentralized protocol, threatens the smart [and] balanced approach to crypto,” the agency has previously maintained.
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