{"id":66269,"date":"2022-08-25T09:25:20","date_gmt":"2022-08-25T06:25:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=66269"},"modified":"2025-09-07T00:29:55","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T21:29:55","slug":"tether-declines-to-freeze-tornado-cash-addresses-without-law-enforcement-requests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/tether-declines-to-freeze-tornado-cash-addresses-without-law-enforcement-requests\/","title":{"rendered":"Tether declines to freeze Tornado Cash addresses without law-enforcement requests"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The issuer of the USDT stablecoin \u2014 the company Tether \u2014 has refused to freeze addresses associated with the transaction-mixing service <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/what-is-the-tornado-cash-mixer-and-why-was-it-sanctioned\">Tornado Cash<\/a> without proper requests from law enforcement authorities.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Tether Holds Firm on Decision Not To Freeze Tornado Cash Addresses, Awaits Law Enforcement Instruction <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/zpsI9lKLlf\">https:\/\/t.co\/zpsI9lKLlf<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Tether (@Tether_to) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Tether_to\/status\/1562468486886346753?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 24, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;So far, OFAC has not indicated that the issuer should freeze secondary-market addresses published on the SDN list or controlled by persons and entities subject to OFAC sanctions. Moreover, no law enforcement agency or regulator in the United States has made such a request, despite our close contacts,&#8221; the statement said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>According to the press release, unilateral address blocking is considered by the company to be a &#8220;reckless and destructive&#8221; measure. According to experts, such actions could negatively affect law enforcement investigations.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In Tether they criticized the Circle behind the USDC stablecoin, which <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/circle-freezes-usdc-on-tornado-cash-addresses-amid-u-s-sanctions\">put the addresses tied to the mixing service on a blacklist<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;We consider Circle&#8217;s measures taken without government instruction premature. They may jeopardize the work of regulators and law enforcement&#8221;.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Unstoppable Finance&#8217;s growth lead Patrick Hansen stressed that, despite its position, Tether actively blocks addresses on the Ethereum network. On this metric, the company is almost ten times ahead of the USDC issuer.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">USDT has banned almost 10x more addresses on Ethereum than USDC <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/g4sn1XwkQX\">pic.twitter.com\/g4sn1XwkQX<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Patrick Hansen (@paddi_hansen) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/paddi_hansen\/status\/1562498802077945863?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 24, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Infrastructure platforms Infura and Alchemy blocked RPC requests to Tornado Cash. The non-custodial exchange Uniswap also <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/uniswap-blocks-253-addresses-some-linked-to-tornado-cash\">closed access<\/a> to its platform for a number of relevant addresses. Similar measures <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/dydx-blocks-tornado-cash-user-accounts\">were taken<\/a> <span data-descr=\"decentralized exchange\" class=\"old_tooltip\">DEX<\/span> dYdX.<\/p>\n<p>On 8 August 2022 OFAC added to <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/us-sanctions-tornado-cash-the-ethereum-mixer\">sanctions list<\/a> the Tornado Cash site, as well as 39 Ethereum addresses and 6 USDC addresses.<\/p>\n<p>On 12 August Dutch authorities <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/in-amsterdam-authorities-arrest-alleged-tornado-cash-developer\">arrested<\/a> an unnamed man suspected of involvement in money laundering and concealing criminal financial flows through a cryptocurrency mixer. Later it became known that this was the service&#8217;s developer, Alexey Pertsev.<\/p>\n<p>On 22 August in Amsterdam <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/protest-in-amsterdam-over-arrest-of-tornado-cash-developer\">a rally was held<\/a> in his support. Participants said that open-source code is not a crime, and authorities should pursue the real perpetrators.<\/p>\n<p>Kraken CEO Jesse Powell called the Tornado Cash sanctions <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/kraken-ceo-calls-sanctions-against-tornado-cash-unconstitutional\">unconstitutional<\/a>, while TRM Labs analysts called them <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/trm-labs-says-sanctions-on-tornado-cash-pose-a-compliance-challenge\">a challenge to compliance<\/a>. Pertsev was also <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/cardano-founder-backs-tornado-cash-developers-amid-ofac-sanctions\">supported by<\/a> Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson.<\/p>\n<p>As reported on 24 August, the Dutch court <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/court-detains-tornado-cash-developer\">remanded Pertsev in custody<\/a> and set a 90-day period for the first hearing.<\/p>\n<p>Follow ForkLog&#8217;s bitcoin news on our <a href=\"\/\/telegram.me\/forklog\" target=\"\u201c_blank\u201d\" rel=\"\u201cnofollow\u201d noopener\">Telegram<\/a> \u2014 news on crypto, prices and analytics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The issuer of the USDT stablecoin\u2014the company Tether\u2014refused to freeze addresses associated with the Tornado Cash transaction-mixing service without proper requests from law enforcement authorities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":66270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1245,1314],"class_list":["post-66269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-tether-usdt","tag-tornado-cash"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"22","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66269"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66271,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66269\/revisions\/66271"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}