How Infura and Circle Cut Off Tornado Cash Following U.S. Sanctions

Github, Circle, dYdX, Alchemy, and Infura... All platforms have taken action against Tornado Cash or individuals connected to the mixer following U.S. sanctions. The Tornado Cash DAO went offline after many social media users reported the community discussing ways to challenge sanctions recently imposed by the United States Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control.At the time of publication, the Tornado Cash DAO was offline reportedly following a discussion in which community members voted unanimously to add its governance layer as a signatory to its treasury’s multisig....

U.S. persons and entities must comply with the Treasury's sanctions or face possible criminal consequences. According to Twitter user @0xdev0, on Monday, Web3 development platform Alchemy and Infura.io blocked remote procedure call (RPC) requests to cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash, preventing users from accessing the applications. The day prior, the U.S. Treasury placed 44 smart contract addresses linked to Tornado Cash in the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) list. U.S. persons and entities are prohibited from blockchain or business interactions with Tornado Cash....

Stablecoin issuers can blacklist interactions with the Tornado Cash dApp on the Ethereum smart contract level. According to crypto data aggregator Dune Analytics, on Monday, Circle, the issuer of the USD Coin stablecoin (USDC), froze over 75,000 USDC worth of funds linked to the 44 Tornado Cash addresses sanctioned by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control's (OFAC) Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) list. Tornado Cash is a decentralized application, or dApp, used to obfuscate the trail of previous cryptocurrency transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. All U.S.....

Tether's market capitalization has reversed a three-month downtrend while USDC sees a drop in value after the U.S. imposed sanctions against Tornado Cash. The market capitalization of Tether (USDT) tokens has increased by nearly $2 billion since the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash.The Office of Foreign Asset Control essentially barred Americans from using Tornado Cash on Aug. 8, blacklisting 44 USD Coin (USDC) and Ether (ETH) addresses connected to the service to a list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN).OFAC alleges....

On Monday, the U.S. Treasury Department’s watchdog the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) banned the ethereum mixing application Tornado Cash. OFAC has cited that the mixer has helped North Korean hackers such as the hacking syndicate known as Lazarus Group. OFAC Sanctions Tornado Cash Mixing App OFAC has officially banned the Tornado Cash and Tornado Cash Classic websites alongside all of the digital currency addresses allegedly associated with the site. “The following entity has been added to OFAC’s SDN list: Tornado Cash,”....