Coin Center said on Monday that the U.S. Treasury Department overstepped its mandate when it sanctioned the Tornado Cash mixing service, vowing to pursue the matter. The group says it is trying to “involve” the Office of Foreign Assets Control and is considering a court appeal.
Treasury sanctions
The organization claims that the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has wrongly sanctioned several cryptocurrency addresses that are not individuals or entities, but rather home computers, arguing that the move creates due process issues and implies First Amendment rights. .
“How can it be correct to add to the sanction list not one person, or property of one person, but instead an automated protocol not under anyone’s control?” the statement said.
Tornado Cash blacklisted
In August, OFAC blacklisted Tornado Cash’s website and several digital currency addresses allegedly associated with its mixing service which the treasury says is used by North Korea to launder over 455 million stolen dollars.
Coin Center said Tornado Cash’s website and some addresses could be appropriate targets for sanctions if the Treasury is able to identify a specific entity or individuals that control it. The group said it was reserving a judgment on compliance with that standard in this case, because the facts are not fully available to the public.
“There is potentially an entity called Tornado Cash that is controlled by certain individuals, and the web address and some of the Ethereum addresses in the notice can be considered as the alias of that entity or, alternatively, as its property,” the statement said.
The Treasury sanctions other sites
But unlike the designation of the Blender.io mixing service and associated persons that was sanctioned earlier this year, the Treasury has targeted the software itself, because many of the addresses that have been blacklisted are addresses for the mixer code, Coin Center said.
“They are the addresses at which a user can find the software logic that, given the appropriate inputs, will execute and shuffle the coins for the users,” the statement said. That software logic is “completely separate from the entity identified as Tornado Cash,” Coin Center said.
It was reported that the application was installed on the Ethereum network in such a way that its installer no longer has control over it and gave customers the opportunity to choose applications
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