Where Tornado Cash stands in 2023, post money laundering charges

• A report by Chainalysis takes a more in-depth have a look at the impression of OFAC’s sanctions imposed on Twister Money. 
• The sanctions led to a decline in influx, however failed to drag the plug on the underlying good contract. 

The Workplace of International Belongings Management (OFAC) of the U.S. Division of Treasury took the crypto world by storm when it introduced sanctions in opposition to well-liked crypto mixer service Twister Money in 2022. The blending service on the Ethereum blockchain was sanctioned in August 2022 for its alleged function in facilitating cash laundering. 

When offering a purpose for its choice, the U.S. Treasury Division acknowledged that Twister Money offered a platform for laundering:

“Proceeds of cybercrimes, together with these dedicated in opposition to victims in america.”

Sanctions did not “pull the plug” on Twister Money

Blockchain analytics agency Chainalysis launched a report on the impression of stated sanctions on 9 January. Based on the report, the primary month following the implementation of the sanctions noticed the entire inflows to the mixer service decline by 68%. 

Provided that the mixer is a decentralized service, rules or sanctions can’t successfully “pull the plug” on it. This is able to not be the case with a centralized protocol. This begs the query, how possible is it to attempt to sanction such a service? 

Although the exercise on the mixer service dropped significantly, it may be attributed to the authorized penalties of the sanctions fairly than the sanctions themselves. The sanctions labored in direction of dis-incentivizing potential customers, fairly than disabling Twister Money.

The report highlighted that whereas the sanctions led to the mixer’s front-end web site being taken down, it had just about no impression on the underlying good contracts. These good contracts can thus run indefinitely. 

Furthermore, a separate report by blockchain safety agency SlowMist discovered that all through 2022, a whopping 1.23 million ETH had been deposited into Twister Money. Nevertheless, over 1.28 million ETH had been withdrawn from the mixer service over that very same interval, leaving a deficit of practically $80 million, based mostly on the present worth of ETH.