In April 2023, the Dutch authorities transferred Alexey Pertsev, the developer of the Ethereum mixer Tornado Cash, to house arrest. Despite requests from the community, the US Treasury has not removed the project from the sanctions list.
According to Mixer.moneysuch measures cannot be applied to bitcoin mixers.
The claims of the authorities against Tornado Cash are based on data on the laundering of $7 billion in cryptocurrencies. However, according to Mixer.money, such services basically cannot filter incoming transactions:
“AML-scorings are contrary to the purpose of mixers – to ensure the anonymity of users. In addition, no service can cancel incoming transactions – the risk of receiving dirty cryptocurrency remains. At the same time, most of these coins are sent not by hackers, but by people who bought coins in unscrupulous exchangers.”
To block Tornado Cash, several types of sanctions are applied: restricting access to the site, blacklisting smart contract addresses SDNfreezing addresses by token issuers and deleting repositories from GitHub.
“Removing code from GitHub is the most interesting sanction. Apparently, the regulators were trying to prevent the creation of analogues. But two weeks later, other users re-uploaded the code to the service,” Mixer.money notes.
Representatives of the service emphasize that neither this nor other measures affect bitcoin mixing services:
“The SDN blacklist only works for mixers based on Ethereum smart contracts. Bitcoin mixing services often generate new addresses for each transaction that cannot be entered into any registry. Blocking the site threatens to lose the interface for working with the bitcoin mixer, but the latter can provide it in other ways. For example, we launched Telegram bot And mirror on the Tor network. Freezing accounts does not apply at all to bitcoin – a network in which there are no centralized coin issuers..
Mixer.money considers the only real threat to the centralization of the Bitcoin network, which could lead to on-chain censorship:
“US validators account for over 50% of Ethereum in staking, and if Uncle Sam’s representatives come to their offices, decentralization and anonymity will immediately end. In bitcoin, the situation is different – the Americans control only a third of the network’s capacity, which means that blocking attempts will only increase the confirmation time for sanctions transactions.
According to the service team, the community should refuse to support sanctions and promote the decentralization of networks and projects:
“Decentralization is the most effective security measure for both blockchains and individual services. We have already done everything possible to distribute and duplicate our services, so that even in the event of a blockage, the users will be able to return their funds.”
Mixer.money is a service for clearing bitcoins and anonymizing wallets, which uses large crypto exchanges as a source of pure cryptocurrency.
Earlier, the Coinbase exchange supported a lawsuit to lift the sanctions imposed on the Tornado Cash mixer.
Found a mistake in the text? Select it and press CTRL+ENTER
Cryplogger Newsletters: Keep your finger on the pulse of the bitcoin industry!
In April 2023, the Dutch authorities transferred Alexey Pertsev, the developer of the Ethereum mixer Tornado Cash, to house arrest. Despite requests from the community, the US Treasury has not removed the project from the sanctions list.
According to Mixer.moneysuch measures cannot be applied to bitcoin mixers.
The claims of the authorities against Tornado Cash are based on data on the laundering of $7 billion in cryptocurrencies. However, according to Mixer.money, such services basically cannot filter incoming transactions:
“AML-scorings are contrary to the purpose of mixers – to ensure the anonymity of users. In addition, no service can cancel incoming transactions – the risk of receiving dirty cryptocurrency remains. At the same time, most of these coins are sent not by hackers, but by people who bought coins in unscrupulous exchangers.”
To block Tornado Cash, several types of sanctions are applied: restricting access to the site, blacklisting smart contract addresses SDNfreezing addresses by token issuers and deleting repositories from GitHub.
“Removing code from GitHub is the most interesting sanction. Apparently, the regulators were trying to prevent the creation of analogues. But two weeks later, other users re-uploaded the code to the service,” Mixer.money notes.
Representatives of the service emphasize that neither this nor other measures affect bitcoin mixing services:
“The SDN blacklist only works for mixers based on Ethereum smart contracts. Bitcoin mixing services often generate new addresses for each transaction that cannot be entered into any registry. Blocking the site threatens to lose the interface for working with the bitcoin mixer, but the latter can provide it in other ways. For example, we launched Telegram bot And mirror on the Tor network. Freezing accounts does not apply at all to bitcoin – a network in which there are no centralized coin issuers..
Mixer.money considers the only real threat to the centralization of the Bitcoin network, which could lead to on-chain censorship:
“US validators account for over 50% of Ethereum in staking, and if Uncle Sam’s representatives come to their offices, decentralization and anonymity will immediately end. In bitcoin, the situation is different – the Americans control only a third of the network’s capacity, which means that blocking attempts will only increase the confirmation time for sanctions transactions.
According to the service team, the community should refuse to support sanctions and promote the decentralization of networks and projects:
“Decentralization is the most effective security measure for both blockchains and individual services. We have already done everything possible to distribute and duplicate our services, so that even in the event of a blockage, the users will be able to return their funds.”
Mixer.money is a service for clearing bitcoins and anonymizing wallets, which uses large crypto exchanges as a source of pure cryptocurrency.
Earlier, the Coinbase exchange supported a lawsuit to lift the sanctions imposed on the Tornado Cash mixer.
Found a mistake in the text? Select it and press CTRL+ENTER
Cryplogger Newsletters: Keep your finger on the pulse of the bitcoin industry!
