Tornado Cash Co-Founder Says 'Impossible' To Enforce Sanctions On Crypto Services

Cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Semenov has said that it is "technically impossible" for sanctions to be enforced against decentralized protocols because of how they are designed. This comes in response to guidance from Financial Action Task Force (FATF) that says that the protocol likely falls under provisions covering virtual asset service providers.

In an interview with Bloomberg earlier this month, Semenov said, "We don’t have more access to it (protocol) than any other users," adding that "There’s not much we can do."

Designed to preserve privacy, the Tornado protocol breaks the link between the sender's and receiver’s addresses on transactions sent over the Ethereum blockchain.

The FATF guidelines note that creators and individuals that “maintain control or sufficient influence” in the application are likely required to have compliance controls in place, including sanctions compliance, even if the project is considered decentralized.

“All we do is write code and publish it on GitHub,” Semenov said. “This is pretty close to the definition of free speech so writing code cannot be illegal.” He added that the company complies with US regulations.

Unlike Tornado Cash, Semenov said many Bitcoin mixers are considered illegal because the services were custodial, i.e. they held users’ funds at one point.

TORN, the native token of Tornado Cash, has gained since hitting an all-time low in January. The price was down about 1.50% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap as of 4.38 a.m. ET.