KingData News: Ether researcher Toni Wahrstätter tweeted that because MEV operator Flashbots is reviewing all transactions from Tornado Cash, none of the 19,436 Ether blocks using the Flashbots MEV-Boost Relay since the merger contain transactions related to Tornado Cash-related transactions.

KingData News: The Tornado Cash code has been re-uploaded to GitHub, and in August, the U.S. Treasury Department placed Tornado Cash on its sanctions list, banning its use by U.S. citizens. Subsequently, Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Semenov tweeted that his GitHub account had been suspended, the Tornado Cash repository has now been removed from GitHub, and the stablecoin issuer Circle has frozen 75,000 USDC belonging to Tornado Cash users.

KingData News: USDT issuer Tether has issued an official announcement stating that 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. When Tether receives an applicable/legitimate request from a verified law enforcement agent to freeze a privately held wallet, the Company complies with the freeze (we do not freeze wallets of exchanges/services).

KingData News: The Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) arrested Pertsev on Aug. 12 over an alleged use of the Ethereum-based privacy tool to launder money and conceal criminal financial flows. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Malik confirmed that Pertsev remains in the hands of Dutch authorities and has not had the chance to contact him since he was put behind bars. Malik said it is very unexpected for me that a person can be arrested for writing open source code. The Dutch authorities have now completely banned Ksenia Malik (or anyone else) from having any contact with Alexey Pertsev.

KingData News: To date, Tornado Cash has received 74.7 percent of the total money laundered on the ethereum network, or a whopping 300,160 ETH, according to SlowMist's 2022 Mid-Year Blockchain Security and Anti-Money Laundering Analysis. Approximately 24% (95,570 ETH) of the laundered funds remain in the hacker's wallet, while 1.5% (6,250 ETH) has been sent to the trading platform.

KingData News: The Coin Center, a crypto research center, has published a blog post stating that the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions against Tornado Cash may be procedurally and legally flawed. "We believe OFAC exceeded its legal authority by adding certain Tornado Cash smart contract addresses to the SDN list, an action that may violate due process and constitutional rights," said the Coin Center. The Coin Center believes that smart contracts cannot be sanctionable entities and that such a standard is dangerous for coders around the world. Coin Center says it will seek to engage OFAC to do its best to help Tornado Cash's innocent banned addresses withdraw their funds and to explore with lawyers the legal basis for Tornado Cash's ban.

KingData News: Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong commented on the Tornado Cash sanction in a tweet: "Sanctioning a technology (as opposed to an individual or entity) seems like a bad precedent to me, and it should probably be challenged. Could have many downstream unintended consequences. OHopefully obvious point: we will always follow the law."

KingData News: Twitter user OKHotshot tweeted that the Uniswap front-end has now begun blocking addresses that have received contaminated transfers from Tornado Cash-related addresses, indicating that "the address is blocked by the Uniswap Labs interface because it is associated with one or more banned activities" and that Uniswap has also provided a channel for appeals. Previously, community members said the Aave front end had begun blocking addresses that interact with Tornado Cash.

KingData News: On Wednesday 10 August, the FIOD arrested a 29-year-old man in Amsterdam. He is suspected of involvement in concealing criminal financial flows and facilitating money laundering through the mixing of cryptocurrencies through the decentralised Ethereum mixing service Tornado Cash. Multiple arrests are not ruled out. The investigation is led by the Public Prosecutor’s Office for serious fraud, environmental crime and asset confiscation. Since Monday 8 August 2022 Tornado Cash has been placed by the US government on the OFAC sanctions list of America.

KingData News: dYdX has long utilized compliance vendors to scan and flag accounts on dYdX’s hosted matching engine that have funds associated with vendors potentially dealing in ransomware, malware, child sex abuse material, known criminals, and sanctions lists published by the global community, such as the UN, EU, UK, US, JP, etc. dYdX recently became aware of a significant increase in accounts flagged by our compliance provider that were subsequently blocked by dYdX. Many accounts were blocked because a certain portion of the wallet’s funds (in many cases, even immaterial amounts) were associated at some time with Tornado Cash, which was recently added to the sanctions list by the U.S. Treasury’s OFAC. This sudden influx of flags affected many account holders that never directly engaged with Tornado Cash, and often such users do not realize the origin of the funds transferred to them during various transactions prior to interacting with our platform, but we must nevertheless maintain certain restrictions. dYdX has made adjustments, within the limits of our compliance policies, that have unbanned certain accounts and we will continue to make efforts to limit flagging and track this issue moving forward.

KingData News: In response to the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issuing sanctions against Tornado Cash,, Uniswap founder Hayden Adams tweeted, "Privacy is critical for a functional and safe society. Arguments that privacy is only for illegal activity are absurd/dangerous and reminds me of the people that want to make encryption illegal. Sanctioning an immutable smart contract, as opposed to individuals/orgs feels like a big freedom of speech issue and bad precedent. Attacking companies for complying with their local laws and regulations is usually not nearly as helpful as advocating for sensible laws / policy."

KingData News: An anonymous user sent a slew of Tornado Cash transactions to high-profile Ethereum addresses on Tuesday in what appears to be a troll implicating them in a potential regulatory mess. Affected wallets include those controlled by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, TV host Jimmy Fallon, clothing brand Puma and a wallet created for donations to Ukraine, according to Etherscan. Prominent crypto figures such as artist Beeple and more mainstream celebrities such as comedian Dave Chappelle received ether (ETH).

KingData News: Gitcoin tweeted, "Saddened to see a core money lego being sanctioned via US policy. We have gone through and suspended the Tornado Cash Grant, but we believe privacy preserving tools are critical and important for all law abiding metaverse citizens." As previously reported, the U.S. Treasury Department placed Tornado Cash on its sanctions list.

KingData News: According to Dune Analytics data, nearly 3.5 million ETH data have been deposited on the Tornado Cash platform, an ethereum hybrid coin platform, with 3,489,754 to date and total transaction fee revenue of $18,119,329. In addition, Tornado Cash currently has 12,243 unique users.

KingData News: Analyst @venturefounder tweeted that after the falling of Tornado Cash, Monero ( $XMR), Zcash ( $ZEC) and other privacy tokens could be at very large risk for being sanctioned next.

KingData News: The U.S. Department of Treasury made Ethereum-based mixer Torando Cash (TORN)the first smart contract to get sanctioned by the U.S. government by banning it to prevent North Korean criminals from laundering money. CommerceBlock’s privacy pioneer CEO Nicholas Gregory commented on this decision. He said:“The ban on Tornado Cash makes little sense, because in the end, no one can prevent people from using other mixer smart contracts, or forking the existing ones. It neither hinders cybercrime, nor privacy. What if someone outside the U.S. mixes their funds through Tornado and then puts them up on Uniswap. Then I go in and somehow get those ‘dirty’ tokens from Uniswap. Did I break the U.S. law now?”

KingData News: Since its creation back in 2019, Tornado Cash has reportedly laundered more than $7 billion worth of virtual currency. “Treasury will continue to aggressively pursue actions against mixers that launder virtual currency for criminals and those who assist them，”said Brian E. Nelson, deputy secretary of the U.S. Treasury Department. Ari Redbord, head of legal and government affairs at analytics firm TRM Labs, said that the move is the Treasury Department’s “largest, most impactful action” in crypto to date.

KingData News: Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Semenov tweeted that his personal GitHub account has been deactivated and his personal repository has been shut down following the U.S. Treasury Department's sanctions announcement, but he is not on the sanctions list (SDN). Tornado Cash's code is still running. In addition, the stablecoin issuer Circle has frozen 75,000 USDC belonging to Tornado Cash users.

KingData News: The Treasury Department has banned all Americans from using decentralized crypto-mixing service Tornado Cash. The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), a watchdog agency tasked with preventing sanctions violations, on Monday added Tornado Cash to its Specially Designated Nationals list, a running tally of blacklisted people, entities and cryptocurrency addresses. As a result, all U.S. persons and entities are prohibited from interacting with Tornado Cash or any of the Ethereum wallet addresses tied to the protocol. Those who do may face criminal penalties.