Tornado Cash, one of the most popular cryptocurrencies mixing platforms in the globe, has been given the green light by the United States Treasury Department.
The penalties state that the cryptocurrency mixer is not permitted to provide transaction services to individuals in the United States.
It is anticipated that the assets of the platform, which may be resident in the United States or which may be under the control of American persons, will be disclosed to the Office of Foreign Assets Control within the Department of the Treasury (OFAC). The Treasury Department said that the network has continued to support financial fraud for cybercriminals like the Lazarus Group, which the North Korean government sponsors. As a result, the Treasury Department argued that the sanctions became necessary.
Since its launch in 2019, the Treasury Department reports that Tornado Cash has been put to use in the processing of a total of seven billion dollars worth of transactions. The Lazarus Group is responsible for around $455 million of this total sum.
Tornado Cash is a virtual currency mixer that laundered money the money raised of cybercrimes, such as those committed against victims in the United States, according to Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian E. Nelson. “Today, Treasury is sanctioning Tornado Cash,” he said.
“Today, Treasury is taking action against Tornado Cash. Tornado Cash has continually failed to apply effective controls aimed to stop it from laundering cash for dangerous cyber actors on a regular basis and without fundamental procedures to manage its dangers, despite public pledges to the contrary. Treasury will continue to pursue actions against mixers aggressively in an effort to stop the laundering of virtual money for criminals and others who support them.”
Crypto Mixers have remained one of the most prominent channels via which hackers clean their money, and this trend is expected to continue. The platforms accept the cash without verifying where it came from and then combine them in a way that makes it difficult to determine who the ultimate beneficiaries are going to be.
Sanctions have been implemented by the Treasury Department in light of the fact that the money transaction capabilities provided by intelligence organizations such as Chainalysis are not yet sufficiently developed to detect such cash flow. Back in May of this year, these sanctions were also applied to Blender.io as an additional target.
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