U.S. Treasury Department Bans Crypto Mixer Tornado Cash

In our news posts, we’ve been regularly mentioning Tornado Cash, a tool used to conduct private transactions on the Ethereum platform that is frequently associated with money laundering. Well, the U.S. Treasury Department has now taken action and has banned U.S. citizens from using Tornado Cash.

In addition, the Treasury Department also compiled a list of Ethereum wallets that are known to be used by Tornado Cash community members. U.S. citizens are prohibited from interacting with these addresses.

Tornado Cash makes private transactions possible by mixing cryptos deposited by various users. In this way, it manages to obscure each transaction.

The Treasury Department claims that over $7 billion worth of crypto has been laundered on Tornado Cash since it launched in 2019. In April 2022, Tornado Cash began using a special tool made by Chainalysis, a well-known blockchain data firm, which prevents addresses prohibited by the U.S. government from using Tornado Cash. However, that obviously wasn’t fruitful.