Coinbase Backs Tornado Cash Lawsuit Against U.S. Treasury

[Jaya60]

"Code is speech and free speech is a constitutional right worth protecting," one of the plaintiffs said.Tornado Cash has been billed as a privacy service that allows people to transact anonymously on the otherwise public Ethereum blockchain. Transactions processed through Tornado Cash are still public but mixed with those of other users to make it difficult to identify individual senders or receivers.

The main driver behind the sanctions, according to the OFAC announcement, was evidence that North Korean state-sponsored hackers Lazarus Group used the service to launder $96 million after stealing funds from Harmony Bridge in June.

That rationale is far too broad, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong wrote in a blog post about the lawsuit.

"Sanctioning open source software is like permanently shutting down a highway because robbers used it to flee a crime scene," Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong wrote in a blog post about the lawsuit. "It's not the best way to solve a problem. It ends up punishing people who did nothing wrong and results in people having less privacy and security.more