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“In late 2022, OFAC […] blacklisted Tornado Cash for its role in laundering virtual currency for malicious cyber actors. The […] users of Tornado Cash […] argue that Tornado Cash’s inclusion on the SDN [Specially Designated National and Blocked Persons] list exceeded OFAC’s statutory authority. The district court disagreed […] Contrary to the [Treasury] Department’s arguments, the immutable smart contracts are not services. So even when we consider OFAC’s regulatory definitions, the immutable smart contracts are not property because they are not ownable, not contracts, and not services. […] We hold that OFAC exceeded its statutory authority […] Accordingly, we reverse and remand to the district court with instructions to grant [the plaintiffs] partial motion for summary judgment.”
— US Court of Appeals, Nov. 26, 2024
Massive W for Ethereum, cypherpunk values, & crypto in general. The TC contract address might soon get removed from the OFAC’s SDN 🎉 No more censorship FUD either 7 replies
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If you search for 0x in the OFAC SDN list (CSV file at https://sanctionslist.ofac.treas.gov/Home/SdnList), you’ll find a bunch of distasteful individuals — arms traffickers, drug dealers, international terrorists, North Korean hackers, etc.
Interestingly, these were added to the OFAC list before Tornado Cash, yet nobody really complained about censorship back then.
So it’s clear that people didn’t care about censorship in principle — in fact most people are probably okay with those entities being blacklisted.
Which is why once TC is removed from the list, I expect the FUD to die down, even though compliance from various relays and block builders to to OFAC will continue just as before.
Also worthy to note that when I checked all the sanctioned addresses in Etherscan, most of them hadn’t transacted in *years*. It makes zero sense for OFAC to even blacklist a wallet address when it’s trivial to create a new one and tumble funds to it.
Just goes to show the Treasury’s lack of understanding 0 reply
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