Circle ‘blacklists’ all Tornado Cash ETH addresses effectively freezing USDC
Circle’s USDC is “Blacklisted” All Ethereum addresses owned by Tornado Cash Have been described US Treasury Sanctions Against the Protocol.
a twitter bot Named USDC Blacklist that scrapes the blockchain of the USDC blocklist.
USDC”Blacklist policyWhen an address is “blacklisted,” they say, “it can no longer receive USDC, and all USDC managed by that address is blocked and cannot be transferred on-chain.” Therefore, the USDC currently held at the Tornado cache address will be frozen indefinitely.
The addresses tweeted by USDCBlacklist match those in records published by the US Treasury Department. Additionally, Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Semenov also revealed that his Github account was suspended following the sanctions.
my @GitHub Account suspended 🤷
Is it illegal to write open source code today?
— Roman Semenov 🌪️ 🇺🇦 (@semenov_roman_) August 8, 2022
In June, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire confirmed that a “blacklist” feature exists within USDC to block addresses “where legally required.”
The impact on Tornado Cash’s operational capacity is still unknown. However, upon reviewing the smart contract, approximately $81,000 USDC currently held by Tornado Cash may currently be frozen.
CryptoSlate has opened a communication channel with the Tornado Cash team, but has yet to respond to requests throughout the day. This article will be updated as additional information becomes available.
