The US Treasury prohibits the use of Tornado Cash, although interaction with its code is permitted.
The U.S. Treasury Department provided a tutorial on how to withdraw money through Tornado Cash for U.S. residents on September 13.
Tornado Cash was a mixing service that the U.S. Treasury Department shut down on August 8. This occurred when investigations revealed that the platform’s transaction obfuscation capabilities were exploited to launder money.
U.S. customers of Tornado Cash must submit an application to OFAC for a particular license in order to withdraw any cash put on Tornado Cash prior to August 8.
“U.S. people or persons conducting transactions within U.S. jurisdiction may apply to OFAC for a particular license to participate in transactions involving the relevant virtual currency.”
Users will also be forced to give “at a minimum” information on their transactions, including the sender’s and recipient’s wallet addresses.
OFAC reaffirmed the sanctions on Tornado Cash, adding that “transactions using Tornado Cash are forbidden for U.S. individuals.” Consequently, using the site would be deemed a breach of “U.S. sanctions restrictions.”
Citizens may engage with Tornado Cash’s open source code without breaking government sanctions, according to OFAC. This is intended to resolve weeks of discussion and argument over the scope of the penalties and how they violate free expression.
“Absent further circumstances, U.S. sanctions restrictions would not bar U.S. people from copying open-source code and making it accessible online for others to examine, as well as discussing, teaching about, or using open-source code in written publications such as textbooks.”
Tornado Cash tweeted that all of the organization’s and contributors’ GitHub accounts were blocked; however, Johns Hopkins kept a version of the code on GitHub for educational and research reasons.
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