{"id":79098,"date":"2023-05-22T13:11:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-22T10:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=79098"},"modified":"2025-09-11T09:06:04","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T06:06:04","slug":"tornado-cash-token-holders-likened-to-terrorists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/tornado-cash-token-holders-likened-to-terrorists\/","title":{"rendered":"Tornado Cash token holders likened to terrorists"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In early May, during a court case regarding the legality of blocking the Ethereum mixer Tornado Cash, the U.S. Treasury compared holders of TORN tokens to terrorists (Al-Qaeda, designated a terrorist organization and banned in several countries). Crypto enthusiast Chris Blec drew attention to this.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">US Treasury Department compares holding <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/search?q=%24TORN&#038;src=ctag&#038;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">$TORN<\/a> tokens to being a member of Al Qaeda.<\/p>\n<p>Wow. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/9cj3De3DHZ\">pic.twitter.com\/9cj3De3DHZ<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Chris Blec (@ChrisBlec) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ChrisBlec\/status\/1659244418531049473?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 18, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>In the case materials, the plaintiffs argued that <span data-descr=\"Office of Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. Treasury\" class=\"old_tooltip\">OFAC<\/span> could impose targeted sanctions on illicit users of the service instead of blanket bans on all Tornado Cash transactions. According to them, a narrow group of TORN token holders did not necessarily agree to participate in the governance of Tornado Cash, and therefore should not fall within the reach of the agency&#8217;s sanctions.<\/p>\n<p>However, officials contend that holders should bear responsibility for the actions of the sanctioned individual.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u00abOFAC would never need, for example, to identify every Al-Qaeda fighter, to demonstrate that it is an organization that could be subjected to sanctions\u00bb, the document says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The Treasury also contends that TORN holders \u201cown\u201d immutable smart contracts, and this allows them to extract some benefit.<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, according to the agency, there is no constitutional right to transfer funds using a preferred service when other means are available.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u00abThose who want to use Tornado Cash can choose other legitimate means of private funds transfers, including traditional channels, such as banking services\u00bb, said the defendant.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>As a result of the hearings, the Treasury has defended its right to sanction the mixer at this stage.<\/p>\n<p>The plaintiffs&#8217; response to the agency&#8217;s objections is due by May 24.<\/p>\n<p>In August 2022 OFAC <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/us-sanctions-tornado-cash-the-ethereum-mixer\">placed on the sanctions list<\/a> the Tornado Cash website, through which, according to the agency, criminals laundered cryptocurrency amounting to more than $7 billion. Of that amount, more than $455 million are linked to North Korea&#8217;s Lazarus Group.<\/p>\n<p>On May 20, 2023, unknown individuals <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/unknown-attackers-seize-control-of-tornado-cash-governance\">took control<\/a> of the governance mechanism of Tornado Cash and began draining TORN tokens from the protocol&#8217;s smart contracts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In early May, during a court case regarding the legality of blocking the Ethereum mixer Tornado Cash, the U.S. Treasury compared holders of TORN tokens to terrorists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":79099,"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":[1162,686,1314,26],"class_list":["post-79098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-court-cases","tag-sanctions","tag-tornado-cash","tag-usa"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"16","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79098","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=79098"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79100,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79098\/revisions\/79100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}