Coin Center is suing the US treasury because of it´s Tornado Cash ban
Finally some positive news, sort of at least. Coming out of this whole Tornado Cash ban. Hopefully, this will come out in favor of Coin Center, limiting any future similar occasions from arising.
Why sue?
There are actually a few co-plaintiffs in the suite along Coin Center. They are Patrick O'Sullivan, David Hoffman goes by @TrustlessState on twitter, and Brigade688 a volunteer civilian support brigade.
https://twitter.com/jerrybrito/status/1580237328546529284
They cite not only privacy as a reason for filing suit. But the bigger stake they see. They fear that if this stands then the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control, OFAC. Could expand its sanction from smart contracts to possibly whole blockchains. Banning them would be as simple as flicking a light switch. Yes, an oversimplification on my part. But hopefully, you get the picture.
They also say in their post, linked below, that the norm for people is privacy. In the real world. But that is not the norm for the Ethereum blockchain. And for people to get back that privacy, sites like Tornado Cash are close to the only way to do that.
Problems for the OFAC
There might be some complications for OFAC as well. One of the reasons they cited for placing the ban was they see the transaction as "foreign". And this would go completely against the narrative the SEC is pushing in their suit filed last month. There they claim that all of Ethereum should fall under US jurisdiction "because the plurality of Ethereum’s decentralized node validators are based in the United States".
One would think that the US government needs to pick here. They can't say they should control Ethereum because a majority of the nodes are based in the US. But then go on and ban Tornado Cas because it is doing "foreign transactions". To me, that sounds a lot like they want to have their cake and eat it to.
Hopefully, this just means that the US Government loses in both cases. Well, one can at least hope.
What are your thoughts on this whole Tornado Cash situation? Do you think the sanctions are a good thing, or is the US Government overreaching? Please sound off in the comment section down below. If you would like to support me and the content I make, please consider following me, reading my other posts, or why not do both instead.
See you on the interwebs!
Picture provided by: https://pixabay.com/
Resources
