#Broken token software

Pertsev’s arrest has raised concerns among open-source software developers over the vulnerability of their trade.According to a recent report by SlowMist, a blockchain security firm, hackers responsible for stealing US$610 million of crypto from Axie Infinity’s Ronin bridge five months ago have already changed most of their Ether loot into Bitcoin using renBTC and privacy tools such as Blender, ChipMixer and TornadoCash. Crypto mixers’ involvement in money laundering has recently drawn attention from regulators.

Since OFAC acted, the price of Tornado Cash’s TORN token has dropped from around US$30 to US$9, according to CoinMarketCap.

Tornado Cash’s services protect the privacy of legitimate transactions but can also be used to hide criminal activity. Cryptocurrency mixers allow users to send crypto into a large pool of crypto from other sources, with which it is mixed, and withdraw the same amount, minus a fee, that obscures the origin of the tokens.

Tornado Cash is an Ethereum-based crypto mixer founded in 2019 to promote privacy and anonymity in the crypto space.

Aside from adding Tornado Cash to its Specially Designated Nationals blacklist, the U.S. 8 for being suspected of having been used to launder more than US$7 billion in cryptocurrencies since 2019, including over US$455 million that allegedly had been stolen by the North Korean state-backed Lazarus hacking group. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Tornado Cash on Aug. Pertsev is currently in custody but has not been charged with any criminal offense. 10 in the Netherlands on suspicion of “involvement in concealing criminal financial flows and facilitating money laundering through the mixing of cryptocurrencies” via Tornado Cash.

Pertsev, a 29-year-old blockchain developer, was arrested on Aug.But things could - and should - be changing. There needs to be more consistency in the crypto conversation worldwide - I dare say there’s currently little of that. The mission remains: How does innovation thrive while seeking first to be understood? It’s a question we’ll be exploring this week at our Crypto Rising virtual event, where we’ll examine the future of regulation for the digital asset sector in Asia-Pacific and beyond. If the digital asset industry has learned one thing over the years, it’s that if it wants to be taken seriously and thrive, it had better get right with regulators, who - rest assured - will be relentless in their pursuit of wrongdoing, and whose capabilities for cracking down on it are constantly improving. And Tornado Cash’s alleged use by North Korea’s Lazarus hacking group will only add to the political pressure to rein it in - alongside other crypto mixers. Both have legitimate uses, but both are also tools used to hide things. The whole point of crypto mixers is to obscure money trails so they’re difficult to trace back to their original sources - the same way money movements in the fiat world can be secreted behind shell companies. Tornado Cash is a cause célèbre for a certain section of the crypto community, but it’s also a means of concealing fund flows that hadn’t sat well with regulators since they first heard of Bitcoin and the alarm was raised over the prospect that cryptocurrencies were a conduit of criminality. This week, it’s the way some in the crypto world are feeling.Īs if the seemingly interminable crypto winter weren’t enough for them, crypto libertarians in the Netherlands have been sufficiently shaken up to mount a demonstration against the arrest of Alexey Pertsev, a developer who has been linked to the mixer Tornado Cash. “Shaken, not stirred” is the way the world’s favorite British secret service agent likes his martinis mixed.

Broken token