Virtual Currency Mixer Tornado Cash Hit With U.S. Sanctions for Playing Host to Crypto Laundering

Thanks to their inability to stop DPRK-affiliated groups from using their services to laundered ill-gotten gains, the U.S. has caught the hot end of the stick when it comes to sanctions against North Korea.

According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Tornado Cash has been used by virtual crooks to laundered $7 billion in cryptocurrencies since it was first launched. The total amount of money stolen from the Ronin Network is $625 million, according to the officials. According to the FBI, the Lazarus Group was behind the hack.

The Office of Foreign Asset Control added Tornado Cash to its list of blocked nationals and people with cryptocurrencies. Entities can request their names be removed from the files if they comply with the agency's complaints. Every Tornado Cash wallet has been added to the sanctions list.

Each user gets back their original amount minus a fee if they take multiple users'cryptocurrencies. The original address is obscured by this. Tornado isn't the only mixer that's been used by thieves. A recent report shows that 10% of funds sent to mixers came from illegal accounts. According to the report, Lazarus Group was responsible for 30% of all activity on mixers.

According to treasury officials, Tornado was used to laundered over $96 million from the Harmony Bridge hack and over $8 million from the recent Nomad theft. Elliptic tracks the number of bad actors moving their money through Tornado Cash. The amount of ether andUSDC that was processed through the mixer was more than half a billion dollars.

Gizmodo reached out to Tornado Cash, but haven't heard back yet.

Some people suggested that Blender duplicate itself from a previous version in order to get around the new sanctions. An official from the Treasury department told reporters that they would be watching any attempts at branding.

Any US citizen who trades or receives money connected to addresses from Tornado Cash can be prosecuted under that sanction. The first mixer to have this black mark added to their name was this one. OFAC had previously imposed sanctions on blender.io for facilitating money laundered from North Korea.

The Under Secretary for the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence said that the mixer hadn't imposed controls to stop bad actors from using the mixer to laundered funds.

The Tornado Cash platform operates on a number of different platforms. Proponents of cryptocurrencies argue that mixers are also used by people looking to maintain their own privacy online or to avoid government censors.

According to the Chainalysis report, Defi or P2P exchange projects are much larger than the illegal money being mixed. Certain transactions will be blocked on the mixing protocols of other wallet with mixing features.