In an announcement on Monday, the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) sanctioned over 40 USDC and ETH addresses from using Tornado Cash, adding them to their Specially Designated Nationals list. The crypto mixing service has allegedly laundered $7 billion worth of crypto to date, including the recent Horizon Bridge hack just over a month ago, and the $375m attack on Wormhole in February.

Whilst most of the cryptocurrency community were startled by the news, others started advocating for privacy rights. All coins running through the concerned wallets are now considered tainted – some of which were sent by internet trolls to addresses belonging to popular names.

Today, Treasury sanctioned virtual currency mixer Tornado Cash, which has been used to launder more than $7 billion worth of virtual currency since its creation in 2019. Virtual currency mixers that assist criminals are a threat to U.S. national security. https://t.co/x8sCXsNzUv
— Treasury Department (@USTreasury) August 8, 2022

The decision was supported by Messari founder Ryan Selkis, and Max Quick author Mark Jeffrey, who you’d think would have gone against it. Shapeshift CEO and founder Erik Voorhees advised the MakerDAO community to remove their USDC collateral by converting to an alternative stablecoin.

As of this post, with their developers and wallets being kicked from GitHub and Circle, the Tornado Cash website remains offline.

Alleged $7b later, US Treasury sanctions addresses linked to Tornado Cash