EPISODE 20
Understanding Crypto Mixers: A Tornado Cash Case Study
Citizens of the United States caught interacting with Tornado Cash are subject to penalties and years of imprisonment
POV: You are here because of the recent U.S. Treasury sanctions on Tornado Cash
On August 08, 2022, the U.S. Treasury OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) sanctioned Tornado Cash from the United States.
If you have never heard of it, Tornado Cash is a fully decentralized protocol for private transactions on Ethereum. In effect, it operates as a crypto mixer.
“Woah! That’s a lot for my semi-fried brain. Slow down!”
Don’t worry, I got you, my friend. Let’s start with the basics.
Say you had to buy some crypto, you’d typically provide your wallet (deposit) address to the seller (person or exchange), right?
Exactly!
But do you know that giving your wallet address to a third party has some downside?
The problem is that it exposes details like your account balance and transaction history associated with the wallet address.
Buy why so?
