On Monday (August 8), the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on the mongrel protocol Tornado.cash, prohibiting U.S. individuals and entities from interacting or trading through the privacy tool. On Tuesday, however, an unknown person sent 0.1 ETH to several celebrities via the Tornado protocol in a suspected protest against the sanctions against Tornado.
According to Joseph Delong, technical officer at NFT lending platform Astaria, the unknown person was sending 0.1 ETH from the sanctioned Tornado Cash wallet to a large number of wallet addresses, mainly those of ENS domains and well-known public figures.
Jimmy Fallon (well-known talk show host Jimmy Fallon)
Shaquille O’Neal (former NBA player O’Neal)
PUMA (sports brand PUMA)
Randi Zuckerberg(Facebook CEO Zuckerberg’s sister)
Logan Paul(Youtube internet personality Logan Paul)
Brian Armstrong(Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong)
Steve Aoki (famous music producer Steve Aoki)
Ukraine Crypto Donation (Ukrainian fundraising wallet)
Dave Chappelle (famous comedian Dave Chappelle)
Beeple (famous NFT artist)
Tornado Cash is a Coin Shuffle, a decentralized privacy feature that allows users to quickly and efficiently mix their funds with those of other users, creating a random mapping between existing user accounts and the new account after the coin is mixed, thus achieving complete anonymity. . U.S. officials say a large amount of money flowing through the coin mixer has been linked to criminal activity, such as North Korea’s proceeds from hacking various cryptocurrency exchanges and services.
The unidentified user, named Depression2019, posted a tweet on Monday, sharing screenshots of the transactions on the chain. The move suggests that flirting with U.S. government sanctions is ineffective. The openness of cryptocurrencies is designed to eliminate intermediaries, in contrast to the traditional financial sector that uses banks and other financial institutions to act as gatekeepers for such transactions.
Because Tornado Cash is a sanctioned entity, U.S. persons may have a legal obligation to block incoming transactions in their wallets. OFAC rules require U.S. persons to freeze any transactions or funds sent from Tornado Cash.
