Tornado Cash Gets Sanctioned, Drawing Criticism from Web3 Proponents

This week, the debate about user privacy and anonymity has taken a new turn. On Monday, August 8, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) placed fresh sanctions on the virtual currency mixer platform Tornado Cash.  What is Tornado Cash? By design, Tornado Cash conceals a cryptocurrency transaction’s origin, destination, and counterparties. All funds sent to the platform are deposited into a shared pool with other users’ tokens, where they are mixed. Once deposits to the platform are mixed, they can be withdrawn again while concealing identifiable information, making it attractive for criminal elements seeking to exploit the platform’s capabilities.