Opinion: Tornado Cash bites the dust
Crypto privacy advocates are reeling with US Treasury’s decision to ban the virtual currency mixing service Tornado Cash. A ban that is causing a domino effect in the markets with USDC provider Circle quickly freezing all of the USDC stablecoins in Tornado Cash wallets, Microsoft-owned Github deleted Tornado Cash’s file repository and the Dutch Government are beginning to arrest Tornado Cash developers.
Privacy advocates are arguing that Tornado Cash developers shouldn’t be arrested for writing code any more than an arms manufacturer shouldn’t be arrested for designing a gun.
Following the thought experiment, if an arms manufacturer knowingly sells its weapons to actors who wish to work against the state, then that manufacturer is committing a crime under federal law.
Tornado Cash made its code freely available to anyone on the internet to mix or hide the origin of point of virtual currency.
It might argue that just because it made this tool available it doesn’t necessarily follow that it must always be used for nefarious purposes just as a gun can be used to defend or protect the innocent.
For example, crypto visionary Vitalik Buterin recently used Tornado Cash to hide a donation he made to the Ukraine government for the war against Russia.
Moreover, Tornado Cash could argue that it isn’t making any “choice” about who used its freely available technology and therefore should be free of responsibility from the consequences.
However in practice, Tornado Cash became the laundry mat of choice for hackers in the followings hacks
Axie Infinity Hack $600M
Solana Wormhole Hack $320M
Harmony Hack 100M and many others
If a service is used by criminals to inflict large amounts of financial harm on the community, at what point are the people behind the service willing to take responsibility?
It seems that in May of this year, Tornado Cash were beginning to listen to the idea of blocking certain addresses from using the service. Action, that may be deemed too little, too late.
Rather than railing against US Treasury’s decision to ban Tornado Cash, we should be thanking them for taking enough interest in the long-term sustainability of the industry to make a stand against a concerning and largely hidden nest of hackers who continue to stage brazen, calculated and debilitating attacks on well-intentioned and legitimate blockchain and cryptocurrency projects.
