Tornado Cash Sanction Implications for Fintech Sanctions Compliance Programs
On August 8th, 2022 the Ethereum smart-contract mixer Tornado Cash was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for its role in laundering more than $7 billion worth of cryptocurrency since its creation in 2019. Of this amount, over $455 million was stolen by the North Korean state-sponsored hacking organization Lazarus Group which the US sanctioned in 2019.