Tornado Cash
Transit Swap ‘hacker’ returns 70% of $23M in stolen funds
A quick response from a number of blockchain security companies has helped facilitate the return of around 70% of the $23 million exploit of decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator Transit Swap. The DEX aggregator lost the funds after a hacker exploited an internal bug on a swap contract on Oct. 1, leading to a quick response from the Transit Finance team along with security companies Peckshield, SlowMist, Bitrace and TokenPocket, who were able to quickly work out the hacker’s IP, email address and associated-on chain addresses. It appears these efforts have already borne fruit, as less than 24 hours after the hack, Transit Finance noted that “with joint efforts of all parties,” the hacker has returned 70% of the stolen assets to two addresses, equating to roughly $16.2 million. These...
3 reasons why USDC stablecoin dropping below $50B market cap is Tether’s gain
The market capitalization of USD Coin (USDC), a stablecoin issued by U.S.-based payment tech firm Circle, has dropped below $50 billion for the first time since January 2022. On the weekly chart, USDC’s market cap, which reflects the number of U.S. dollar-backed tokens in circulation, fell to $49.39 billion on Sep. 26, down almost 12% from its record high of $55.88 billion, established merely three months ago. USDC versus USDT weekly market cap chart. Source: TradingView In contrast, the market cap of Tether (USDT), which risked losing its top stablecoin position to USDC in May, crossed above $68 billion on Sep. 26, albeit still down 17.4% from its record high of $82.33 billion in May 2022. The divergence between USDT and USDC shows investors’ renewed preference...
Coinbase is fighting back as the SEC closes in on Tornado Cash
On Sept. 8, Coinbase announced it was bankrolling a lawsuit against the United States Treasury Department. The cryptocurrency exchange is funding a lawsuit brought by six people that challenges the sanctions on Tornado Cash. And on Sept. 9, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler announced he was working hard with Congress to create legislation to increase cryptocurrency regulations. But these two stories are not mutually exclusive. The sequence of events proves that governments are purely reactive rather than proactive when it comes to decentralized finance (DeFi). Tornado Cash was sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) back in August. OFAC claimed the smart contract mixer has helped to launder more than $7 billion worth of cryptocurrency since ...
Tether says it would not freeze sanctioned Tornado Cash addresses unless instructed by law enforcement
On Wednesday, U.S. dollar stablecoin issuer Tether (USDT) said that it would not freeze smart contract addresses sanctioned by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets (OFAC) Control’s Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) list for cryptocurrency trail-mixer Tornado Cash. In explaining the decision, Tether said: “So far, OFAC has not indicated that a stablecoin issuer is expected to freeze secondary market addresses that are published on OFAC’s SDN List or that are operated by persons and entities that have been sanctioned by OFAC. Further, no U.S. law enforcement agency or regulator has made such a request despite our near-daily contact with U.S. law enforcement whose requests always provide precise details.” Tether pointed out that unilaterally f...
Tornado Cash community fund multi-signature wallet disbands amid sanctions
Following the sanctions placed by the United States on USD Coin (USDC) and Ethereum (ETH) addresses associated with the crypto mixer Tornado Cash (TORN), the signatories of the projects’ multi-signature community fund disbanded. In 2021, the Tornado Cash community created a fund to provide incentives to key contributors to the project. The fund was held in a community-managed multi-signature wallet with five peer-elected members validating transactions who were selected because of their contributions to the project. However, as interacting with Tornado Cash started to come with more risks, with penalties ranging from an up to $10 million fine to up to 30 years in prison for U.S. citizens, the community members in charge of the community fund vacated their posts to give up control of ...
Tornado Cash DAO goes down without explanation following vote on treasury funds
The Tornado Cash DAO went offline after many social media users reported the community discussing ways to challenge sanctions recently imposed by the United States Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control. At the time of publication, the Tornado Cash DAO was offline reportedly following a discussion in which community members voted unanimously to add its governance layer as a signatory to its treasury’s multisig wallet, which manages a reported $21.6 million. It’s unclear what was responsible for the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) going dark, but it followed a series of actions taken by different authorities and private entities in the wake of U.S. sanctions announced against the controversial mixer on Monday. In the last four days, Circle froze more than 75,000 U...
TORN price sinks 45% after U.S. Treasury sanctions Tornado Cash — Rebound ahead?
Tornado Cash (TORN) has lost almost half its market valuation two days after being slapped with sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Department. The department accused Tornado Cash, a crypto mixer platform, of laundering more than $7 billion in cryptocurrencies, including a stash of $455 million allegedly stolen by North Korea-based hackers. Immediate reactions were followed by U.S.-based crypto companies, including Circle and Coinbase. In a controversial move, the popular crypto firms blocked the movements of their jointly-issued stablecoin USDC tied to Tornado Cash’s blacklisted smart contracts. TORN price drops 45% The news prompted traders to limit their exposure to TORN, Tornado Cash’s native token. On the daily chart, TORN’s price has slipped by approximately 45...
Anonymous user sends ETH from Tornado Cash to prominent figures following sanctions
On Tuesday, one day after the U.S. Treasury sanctioned cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash for its alleged role in cryptocurrency money laundering operations, intervals of 0.1 Ether (ETH) transactions began materializing from the smart contract to prominent figures such as Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and American television host Jimmy Fallon. It is not possible to trace the source of the transactions per Tornado Cash design, and as a result, either one individual or multiple individuals or entities could be involved in the operation. Notable individuals/companies who just received funds from a government-sanctioned entity: – Jimmy Fallon– Shaquille O’Neal– PUMA– Randi Zuckerberg– Logan Paul– Brian Armstrong– Steve Aoki– Uk...
Circle freezes blacklisted Tornado Cash smart contract addresses
Crypto data aggregator Dune Analytics said that, on Monday, Circle, the issuer of the USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin, froze over 75,000 USDC worth of funds linked to the 44 Tornado Cash addresses sanctioned by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control’s Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) list. Tornado Cash is a decentralized application, or DApp, used to obfuscate the trail of previous cryptocurrency transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. All U.S. persons and entities are prohibited from interacting with the virtual currency mixer’s USDC and Ethereum smart contract addresses on the SDN list. Penalties for willful noncompliance can range from fines of $50,000 to $10,000,000 and 10 to 30 years imprisonment. An estimated $437 million worth of assets, cons...
Harmony hacker sends stolen funds to Tornado Cash mixer
The funds from Harmony’s Horizon Bridge have begun to move into the Tornado Cash Ethererum mixer, signaling that the attacker has no intention of accepting the $1 million bounty offered. The decision to obfuscate the ill-gotten gains answers questions about whether the Harmony team’s offer of just 1% of the $100 million in crypto funds stolen on June 24 would be enough to convince the exploiter to return them. #PeckShieldAlert ~6k $ETH (~$7.1m) into @TornadoCash from @harmonyprotocol exploiters Intermediary address: 0x432…47ae pic.twitter.com/AR9dmJRQet — PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) June 27, 2022 A total of 18,036.3 ETH worth about $21 million was moved out of the Horizon Bridge exploiter’s primary wallet at 03:10 am ET on June 28. These funds were then divided equally three w...
Tornado Cash says it’s using Chainalysis oracles to block access from OPAC sanctioned addresses
On Friday, Tornado Cash announced that it was using oracle contracts from Chainalysis to block wallet addresses sanctioned by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC. The move comes after the U.S. Department of the Treasury linked North Korean cybercriminal Lazarus Group as an alleged perpetrator for the recent $600 million+ Ronin Bridge exploit. As told by blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, the hackers have sent approximately $80.3 million worth of Ether (ETH) through Tornado Cash. “Maintaining financial privacy is essential to preserving our freedom; however, it should not come at the cost of non-compliance,” said the Tornado Cash team. Tornado Cash is a popular cryptocurrency mixture used to obfuscate the trail of transactions for privacy. The Chainalysis S...
