{"id":83799,"date":"2023-08-30T19:30:45","date_gmt":"2023-08-30T16:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=83799"},"modified":"2025-09-12T13:23:02","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T10:23:02","slug":"opensea-accused-of-blocking-users-for-using-tornado-cash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/opensea-accused-of-blocking-users-for-using-tornado-cash\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenSea accused of blocking users for using Tornado Cash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The non-fungible token platform <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/why-opensea-is-the-most-popular-nft-marketplace\">OpenSea<\/a> has begun blocking users for interacting with the mixer <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/what-is-the-tornado-cash-mixer-and-why-was-it-sanctioned\">Tornado Cash<\/a>. This was <a href=\"https:\/\/wublock.substack.com\/p\/why-my-opensea-account-was-suddenly\">reported<\/a> by journalist Colin Wu.<\/p>\n<p>According to him, he had not used the marketplace for several months, and on August 20 he discovered his account blocked. In support, OpenSea explained the decision as a violation of <span data-descr=\"U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control\" class=\"old_tooltip\">OFAC<\/span> sanctions.<\/p>\n<p>Wu examined X (formerly Twitter) for similar problems among other users and found that the blocking on the platform may be related to the use of Tornado Cash.<\/p>\n<p>The journalist noted that the investigation is still ongoing, and that the restrictions are driven by OpenSea&#8217;s &#8220;proactive and stringent control policy&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>ForkLog requested comments from the marketplace&#8217;s representatives, but at the time of writing had not received a response.<\/p>\n<p>In August 2022 OFAC <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/us-sanctions-tornado-cash-the-ethereum-mixer\">added to the sanctions list<\/a> Tornado Cash, a site which, according to the agency, criminals laundered more than $7 billion. More than $455 million of that total were linked to the Lazarus Group&#8217;s activities.<\/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> the developer Alexey Pertsev on suspicion of involvement in laundering funds and concealing criminal financial flows. He denied all charges.<\/p>\n<p>In April 2023 the court changed Pertsev&#8217;s measure of detention to <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/tornado-cash-developer-to-be-released-under-house-arrest\">home detention<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In August, the U.S. Department of Justice <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/fbi-arrests-tornado-cash-co-founder\">charged<\/a> two Tornado Cash co-founders \u2014 Roman Storm and Roman Semenov \u2014 with money laundering and sanctions violations.<\/p>\n<p>The FBI detained Storm. He was soon <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/tornado-cash-co-founder-released-on-bail\">released on bail<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NFT platform OpenSea began blocking users for using the Tornado Cash mixer, according to journalist Colin Wu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":83800,"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":[1265,686,1314],"class_list":["post-83799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-opensea","tag-sanctions","tag-tornado-cash"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"19","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83799","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=83799"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83801,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83799\/revisions\/83801"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}