US Congressman Tom Emmer (R-MN) desires solutions from the Treasury Department over the sanctions the company imposed on Tornado Cash.
In a letter addressed to Treasury’s Janet Yellen on Tuesday, Rep. Emmer highlighted his tackle the sanctions, noting the implication of the US authorities’s transfer to nationwide safety in addition to people’ privateness rights.
The lawmaker shared the letter on Twitter.
Sanctioning ‘privacy-enabling’ code
According to Rep. Emmer, whereas the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)’s sanctions goal illicit funds linked to crypto heists and different cyberattacks, they have been nevertheless distinctive in that the company didn’t levy them “against a person or an entity, but against ‘privacy-enabling’ code.”
The sanctions are thus towards “a neutral, open-source, decentralised technology,” which raised lots of questions that the Treasury wants to make clear, he famous.
Emmer desires the US Treasury to clarify whether or not OFAC’s sanctions undertook that the banned Tornado Cash addresses certainly belong to people. He additionally seeks clarification on precisely who or what entity the company believes controls the blending service’s good contracts.
Also on his checklist of questions is the recourse for customers whose funds are locked, in addition to those that would possibly obtain unsolicited cash from the blacklisted addresses.
OFAC sanctioned Tornado Cash, a decentralised transaction anonymising platform, early this month over claims it had enabled a number of cash laundering transactions involving North Korea-linked hackers.
The blacklisting has compelled a number of crypto platforms to cease Tornado Cash performance on their websites, and seen wider outcry over the identical throughout the crypto area following the arrest of a developer within the Netherlands.
