In the week after the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) approved the Tornado Cash website, the price of the token that underpins the scheme has fallen 56%, closing the week with a high of March 31 It started at $.56 and ended the week at a low of $13.09, according to CoinMarketCap.
Tornado Cash (TORN) is an ERC20 token and the native token of the Tornado Cash DAO used to manage governance and voting. It is currently the 691st largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $15.5 million.
After the US Treasury Department imposed its sanctions and Github took the Tornado Cash website offline by removing its repository from the site, the token price began to decline.
Launched in 2019, Tornado Cash is a blockchain protocol for sending and receiving anonymous transactions by mixing Ethereum tokens with a pool of other tokens, making the user anonymous.
In sanctioning Tornado Cash, the U.S. Treasury Department cited its use by North Korean hacker group Lazarus Group and the laundering of over $103.8 million through the hacks of the Horizon Harmony Bridge and Nomad Token Bridge earlier this summer.
After a debate by the Tornado Cash community, the group’s Discord server disappeared and unknown persons also took the forum on the Tornado Cash community website offline. At the same time, a member of the developer group behind Tornado Cash was taken into custody by law enforcement agencies in the Netherlands.
The US Treasury Department’s Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) said its criminal investigation into Tornado Cash began in June 2022.
This crypto winter seems to be particularly tough for the Tornado Cash community. Coupled with the current bear market, sanctions, closures and arrests appear to have dealt a serious blow to the project as owners continue to flee.
Stay up to date on crypto news and receive daily updates in your inbox.
