Block Research: Tornado Cash deposits down by 79% after US sanctions

The amount of cryptocurrency in the protocol decreased by 15%

12.08.2022 - 06:45

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What’s new? Amid US sanctions, cryptocurrency mixing service Tornado Cash saw a sharp outflow of users and a 79% decrease in deposits compared to the previous week. According to The Block Research, only $6 million has been deposited and $62 million has been withdrawn since the restrictions were imposed. This reduced the amount of cryptocurrency stored in the service by 15%.

The Block’s material

How did events develop? On August 8, the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) put Tornado Cash on the sanctions list, which means a complete ban on the use of the service in the States. Following the blocking, it was removed from the GitHub hosting service, and Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, froze more than 75 000 coins associated with the mixer’s sanctioned addresses.

The dYdX exchange also started blocking Tornado Cash-related accounts. There have already been cases of mistakenly blocked accounts, whose owners may not have been aware of the origin of the funds, which were subsequently restored.

For more details on the experts’ opinions on the dangers of interacting with sanctioned services such as Tornado Cash, see GetBlock Magazine’s article.

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