Trump’s Ministry of Finance Removes the sanctions of Crypto’s favorite money laundering service

Tornado Cash, a cryptocurrency “mixer”, designed to make it difficult to track cryptocurrency transactions, was sanctioned by the Biden administration and made illegal due to its use in facilitating some significant washing schemes. But Donald Trump, the president of cryptocurrency, returned it. The Ministry of Finance of the United States declared On Friday, it will raise sanctions for money in a tornado, which allows it to be reused to anonymize cryptocurrency transactions.

Here is a quick and dirty story about Tornado Cash’s back: The protocol was launched in 2019. As a way of cryptocurrency users to darken ownership of the currency. Take “contaminated” money (ie coins that are identified and associated with a person), put them through money in a tornado, where it is divided, mixed into a larger pool and moving around until it is effective “clean” and unidentified. By 2022, he had taken heat from the Ministry of Finance, as it was used by malicious participants to drink cryptocurrency, stolen as part of a hack.

After the Ministry of Finance of Biden approached issuance of its sanctions In August 2022, it Accused Tornado money for laundry over $ 7 billion including Nearly $ 500 million that the agency claims it was stolen from the North Korean -sponsored hacking team The Lazarus Group. By sanctioning the protocol and its founder, the Biden administration generally illegally made the use of money in a tornado in the United States.

However, sanctions may not have been as effective (and according to a federal court, not all this legitimate). A exploration He found that the use of tornado money continues to rise despite its blacklist location. And last year Federal Court of Appeal ruled The fact that the Ministry of Finance exceeded its legal body by sanctioning the protocol-result that has arrived because the black list is intended to punish foreign organizations and Tornado Cash, which works autonomously through self-fulfilling intelligent contracts, is not owned or managed by a foreign citizen.

This takes us today when the Trump administration officially raises the limitations of money in Tornado, which allows it to function again in the United States. Crypto people certainly celebrate this move, call This is a victory for “confidentiality”. Others, such as the Democratic Congressman Sean Caste,, called it “One of the most dangerous and irresponsible things coming out of Trump’s White House.”

Casta can go a little hard there; Usually extra confidentiality is a good thing, even if it means that some people can use it maliciously as encrypted messages. Of course, there is an argument that the average person is used for encrypted messages and cryptocurrency is mainly useful only for criminal activity. But there is a world in which it doesn’t really matter the performance tracking of the chain, even those who go through the efforts to hide details are becoming more complicated and more complicated and Some experts believe Tornado money deals are already traceable with enough effort.