Tornado Cash Banned in the US, But Will This Ban Work?

This week, the famous crypto mixer Tornado Cash was launched in the United States banned so to speak. This crypto mixer was known to merge different crypto transactions to disguise the origin of crypto coins. Since the ban, however, an anonymous user has already playfully shown that the ban may not be or barely enforced.

Tornado Cash

Due to the US government’s de facto ban on Tornado Cash, US citizens are no longer allowed to use the service. Earlier this year, another crypto mixerBlender.io, banned in the United States.

This government attack on crypto mixers has everything to do with crypto mixers being disproportionate are often used by criminals. It became clear some time ago that Blender.io was used by the infamous North Korean hacker Lazarus Group. It is therefore not entirely surprising that the US authorities have launched a hunt for crypto mixers.

The “dusting” of celebrities

However, there are many doubts about the effective enforcement of the ban. At first glance, this seems almost impossible, which means that the ban actually makes no sense. An anonymous user presented this in an extremely interesting way.

It has a large number of celebrities, including Steve Aoki, Jimmy Fallon, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and others “dusted”. Dusten in this case means the anonymous person sent all those celebrities some cryptocurrency via Tornado Cash. Most likely, this ridiculous action was taken to prove that the Tornado Cash ban is completely unnecessary.

Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong Received OFAC pic.twitter.com/utIY2c3YYt

— database (@tier10k) August 9, 2022

It is now illegal for US citizens to interact with Tornado Cash, and this may include receiving money from addresses using the app. But in reality, it is impossible to prevent other people from sending crypto to your wallet address if that wallet is known to the public.