What’s the story around Tornado Cash? The U.S. Department of the Treasury made its case in a press release, but the question still lingers. Because, as many people have pointed out, Tornado Cash is not an institution. It’s a smart contract in the Ethereum blockchain and, according to US law, code is supposed to be speech. Are they challenging that? To make things even more suspicious, the Netherlands arrested an alleged Tornado Cash developer.

What is going on here? Was that man arrested just for writing code? How’s that possible? He didn’t launder that money himself… or did he? According to FIOD, the developer “is suspected of involvement in concealing criminal financial flows and facilitating money laundering through the mixing of cryptocurrencies through the decentralised Ethereum mixing service Tornado Cash.”

That could mean a number of things. Is there more to this story? Is the developer guilty of other crimes besides writing code? Or did the world’s authorities start an all-out war on privacy while we weren’t looking? Very few people are able to answer those questions at the moment. What we can do, though, is consult with the Twitterati and see what the general sentiment out there is.

Privacy Is A Human Right

• Stani Kulechov, the Aave Protocol CEO, schooled regulators about the justified and legal use of privacy tools. “This arrest makes all privacy/encryption developers a target. The worst part is people use privacy tools on a daily basis online, because the internet is an unsafe place without privacy or encryption.”
• Bankless’ Ryan Sean Adams broke it down to the essential. “They put a man in jail because bad people used his open source code. This cannot stand in any free society”
• Shape Shift’s Erik Voorhees commented on the absurdity of the situation.  “TC is not a person, nor a business entity. It’s an open source software tool. It cannot be sanctioned, it does not respond to subpoena or legal request.”

The headline: “Treasury Sanctions Tornado Cash”

Reality: TC is not a person, nor a business entity. It’s an open source software tool. It cannot be sanctioned, it does not respond to subpoena or legal request.

***It is privacy-seeking Americans who have been sanctioned.***

— Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees) August 8, 2022

• Matt Corallo, the bitcoin core contributor who suspiciously went after bitcoin maxis recently, shared a call to action. “This is completely and totally unacceptable and needs to be fought in court, in lobbies in Brussels, and ultimately in ads for voters.”
• Controversial analyst and trader PlanB spoke for The Netherlands. “Dutch IRS doing dirty job for the US. Arresting an open source developer because “criminals” might have used the open source (!) software. A disgrace to my country and my hometown Amsterdam.”

TORN price chart on Uniswap3 | Source: TORN/USDC on TradingView.com

Bitcoin Maximalists Join The Fight

• Analyst and podcast guest of the year, Lyn Alden analyzed the case and provided the historical perspective. “In the early decades of the internet, when end-to-end encryption was developed, it was controversial. “Who would want privacy online, other than bad people!?” But of course this technology became a key pillar of safe online credit card payments. We all use it now.”

People use crypto privacy techniques in large part to stop exchanges/corporations/others from spying on their subsequent transactions.

They are also used by human rights groups in authoritarian parts of the world.

— Lyn Alden (@LynAldenContact) August 12, 2022

• Podcast host Stephan Livera provided the metaphors. “Imagine if road builders were being arrested “because criminals use them”? Or home curtain installers? Wanting privacy should not be considered a crime.”
• Satoshi Act Fund’s Dennis Porter commented on… well, Satoshi. “Tornado cash dev was arrested which really goes to show how brilliant Satoshi was for remaining anonymous. He/she/they knew the powers that be would never let them live free.”

Miscellaneous Considerations About Tornado Cash

• A pseudonymous Twitter user posed an enigma. “Tornado cash dev arrested – do kwon at home tweeting.” How is that possible?
• The Block’s Lucy Harley-McKeown showed us something cool. “This is a copy of the Tornado Cash smart contract, encoded as art.”

People have started to make resistance art to protest the arrest of a Tornado Cash developer. This is a copy of the Tornado Cash smart contract, encoded as art. pic.twitter.com/DZMD9bkDrw

— Lucy Harley-McKeown (@LHM1) August 12, 2022

• Tornado Cash used Vitalik as an example of justified behavior.“One of many valid use cases of privacy protocols: donating to a cause that might get you in trouble if done publicly.”

One of many valid use cases of privacy protocols: donating to a cause that might get you in trouble if done publicly https://t.co/LJM4Gd4dFf

— Tornado.cash (@TornadoCash) August 9, 2022

Questions And Explanations About Tornado Cash

• Blockchain lawyer Jake Chervinsky asked the important questions. “I’ve spent all week on the Tornado Cash sanctions & haven’t heard a satisfying justification yet. The main argument is “criminals used it a lot.” Okay, but they use everything law-abiding citizens do.”

2 potential possibilities:

1) tornado cash had identifiably material volume for money laundering. idk what the estimate is, but probably 1-2bn? nobody really using coinjoin on such scale.

2) maybe the arrested guy was not just a dev, but actually assisting organised crime.

— Cobie (@cobie) August 12, 2022

• Analyst and Internet personality Cobie offers two possibilities that would justify the U.S. Department of the Treasury‘s acts. “1) tornado cash had identifiable material volume for money laundering. idk what the estimate is, but probably 1-2bn? nobody really using coinjoin on such scale. 2) maybe the arrested guy was not just a dev, but actually assisting organized crime.”

Stay tuned to Bitcoinist for new developments in this fascinating new case.

Featured Image by Willgard Krause from Pixabay | Charts by TradingView

The arrest warrant in the form of a non-fungible token (NFT) of Nelson Mandela, Nobel Peace Prize awardee and former South African president, has been sold for $130,550. Read here to know more about cReal, a crypto blockchain-based stable coin. Meanwhile, Rio De Janeiro is set to become the first city in Brazil to accept property tax payments from citizens through cryptocurrencies. 

The global crypto market cap increased by 1.77 per cent to $2.14 trillion at 8.20 am. The global crypto volume too increased by 33.26 per cent to $121.63 billion, as per Coinmarketcap data. 

Cryptocurrency Prices

Bitcoin (BTC), the world’s oldest cryptocurrency, was trading at $47,562.99, higher by 1.53 per cent in the last 24 hours.

Ethereum (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation, was also trading higher by 2.93 per cent at $3,391.99.

Welcome to Rio, @binance! https://t.co/XLE4KbrzoK

— Rio de Janeiro City Hall | Official account (@Riocityhall) March 28, 2022

Among other major coins, Cardano (ADA) was up by 3.1 per cent at $1.21, Algorand (ALGO) was down by 2.87 per cent at $0.9265, Binance Coin (BNB) rose by 1.38 per cent at $435.59, Solana (SOL) by 3.58 per cent at $109.70, and Polkadot (DOT) was trading lower by 0.88 per cent at $22.31. 

Today’s top gainer was Gamerse (LFG), which was up by 1053.5 per cent at $0.007053. The top loser was Crypto Crash Gaming (CCG), which was down by 98.16 per cent at $0.0002827.

 

Meme Coin And DeFi Prices

Dogecoin (DOGE) was down by 1.14 per cent at $0.1459. Its volume to market cap ratio stands at 0.07273. However, rival Shiba Inu (SHIB) was up by 5.27 per cent at $0.00002729.

Dogelon Mars (ELON) was trading with a gain of 5.96 per cent at $0.000001087, Floki Inu (FLOKI) climbed 1.55 per cent at $0.000001087, while Samoyed Coin (SAMO) gained 3.67 per cent at $0.02213.

In the DeFi segment, YFI (yearn.finance) was trading with a loss of 0.3 per cent at $22,406.58, while Uniswap (UNI) fell 4.41 per cent to trade at $11. Terra (LUNA) was up by 10.13 per cent at $102.57, Avalanche (AVAX) rose 2.23 per cent to $93.71 and Aave (AAVE) was up by 2.44 per cent to $173.54.

Latest Updates

Eduardo Paes, Mayor, Rio De Janeiro, had passed the amendment regarding the property tax law, which makes payments in cryptos possible, in January. Locally this tax is known as Imposto sobre a propriedade predial e territorial urbana (IPTU). The tax payments will be converted into Brazilian real by crytocurrency companies engaged by the city hall and then be paid to the municipality. So in essence the final tax payments will be received in fiat currency by the Rio De Janeiro government, reported Bloomberglinea.com.

The proceeds from the sale of Mandela’s arrest warrant NFT and others will fund the Liliesleaf museum, a heritage museum that documents South Africa’s struggle for freedom. “Proceeds for the Mandela NFT will go to Liliesleaf museum to keep their doors open and stay afloat,” said Posthumus, CEO, Momint, the company which auctioned off these NFTs, reported France24.com

Bitcoin and other major digital currencies slowed after the price hike observed earlier in the week on Tuesday evening.

Because it is important

Bitcoin’s price plummeted after the US Department of Justice seized $ 4.5 billion in cryptocurrencies stolen during the 2016 Bitfinex hack; On Tuesday morning, two spouses were arrested in Manhattan in connection with the incident.

In intraday trading on Tuesday, Bitcoin hit a high of $ 45,293.87, while Ethereum rose to $ 3,219.47; at the time of publication, the two currencies were down 2.73% and 3.29% respectively from those levels.

Also Read: $ 47 million in ETH raised to free Julian Assange

Macroeconomic factors, which took a back seat on Monday, and Tuesday returned in strength to determine Bitcoin’s trajectory: the US currency unit strengthened while the dollar index, a measure of the strength of the greenback against six rival currencies, it was up 0.2%, according to a Reuters report.

“Bitcoin’s rally is taking a break, and exhaustion is stabilizing along with profit takings, as rate hikes drive the dollar up,” he said. Edward Moyasenior analyst at OANDA.

The analyst said that while Bitcoin has had a “nice rebound” moving up from the bottom around the $ 33,000 level, the $ 46,000 to $ 48,000 range “will prove to be significant resistance.”

“Bitcoin could begin to consolidate between the $ 40,000 and $ 45,000 levels until the US inflation report comes out later this week,” Moya said in a note analyzed by Benzinga.

Michaël van de Poppean Amsterdam-based cryptocurrency trader, believes Bitcoin will face a “crucial resistance”, different from that seen in September 2021.

My view on the markets is described in the chart.#Bitcoin faces a crucial resistance, which is different than the run we’ve experienced in September 2021. In that regard, I’m assuming we won’t break in one go and have a correction -> ending up bad for #altcoins. pic.twitter.com/7RKynM1dBW

– Michaël van de Poppe (@CryptoMichNL) February 8, 2022

Meanwhile, in the last 7 weeks, Bitcoin “mega whales” have significantly increased their stocks: since December 23, addresses with at least 1,000 BTC have added a total of 220,000 BTC – or $ 9.72 billion – to their wallets. , according to Santiment, a cryptocurrency data feed for investors.

Mega whales of #Bitcoin have accumulated significantly the past 7 weeks. Addresses with 1,000 $ BTC or more have added a combined 220,000 $ BTC to their combined wallets since December 23rd, the most rapid accumulation we’ve seen since September, 2019. https://t.co/RdVAg9FcP7 pic.twitter.com/gL1nJ18hyA

– Santiment (@santimentfeed) February 8, 2022