U.S. Fed's Vice Chair Barr Suggests CBDC Decision Remains a ‘Long Way’

SEC's Gensler Deserves Increased Congressional Scrutiny Regarding Crypto Regulation: U.S. Senator

Ether Whales Accumulate $94 Million in ETH Amidst Price Dive to $1.6K

One day after the U.S. Treasury blacklisted cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash for its alleged role in cryptocurrency money laundering operations, 0.1 Ether (ETH) transactions started happening from the smart contract to well-known people like Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and American TV host Jimmy Fallon. The way Tornado Cash is set up, it is not possible to find out where the transactions came from. This means that either one person or more than one person or entity could be behind the operation.

Because of sanctions, U.S. people and businesses can't interact with Tornado Cash's smart contract addresses on the blockchain or in business. If someone doesn't follow the rules on purpose, they can get a fine of up to $10 million or 10 to 30 years in prison.

U.S. Treasury Sanctions Widely Used Crypto Mixer Tornado Cash | TRM Insights
The regularity of the transactions suggests that the sender or senders may be playing a joke on the people who get the money to draw police attention to them. But the Treasury sanctions require that the smart contract addresses on the blacklist be used "willfully" before criminal charges could be brought. So, it is unlikely that getting tokens from Tornado Cash for free without knowing about it or doing anything to earn them can be a violation of the sanctions.

On the same day, Web3 development platforms Alchemy and Infura.io joined stablecoin issuer Circle and programming repository vault GitHub in blacklisting the approved Tornado Cash addresses and blocking access to its front-end application. Months before, Tornado Cash tried to stop hackers from using its platform to launder stolen crypto funds by making it so that only legitimate wallets could access the application. Roman Semenov, one of the company's co-founders, said at the time that the instrument only blocked access to the DApp interface and not the smart contract itself.
Crypto mixer Tornado Cash sanctioned by US Treasury Department | The Edge Markets
Months before, Tornado Cash tried to stop hackers from using its platform to launder stolen crypto funds by making it so that only legitimate wallets could access the application. Roman Semenov, one of the company's co-founders, said at the time that the instrument only blocked access to the DApp interface and not the smart contract itself.

-------