Kraken CEO calls sanctions against Tornado Cash “unconstitutional

The addition of the Tornado Ethereum 2.0: why Cash mixer to the sanctions list may violate the U.S. Constitution and is more of a machine reaction to the collapse of Terra. The CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, Jess Powell, said in an interview with Bloomberg.

He called the exclusion of the project code from Github “unnecessary.”.

“Citizens have a right to financial privacy. Let’s see if it stands up to the test in court. […] The authorities want to control the availability of digital currency by such possibly unconstitutional actions. It scares me a little bit.”, – he stated.

On Aug. 8, OFAC sanctioned the cryptocurrency mixer site Tornado Cash, as well as 39 Ethereum- and six USDC-affiliated addresses.

According to the agency, since Tornado Cash was created in 2019, attackers have used it to launder more than $7 billion worth of cryptocurrency. According to Elliptic, it is correct to talk about $1.54 billion.

As a reminder, members of the decentralized autonomous organization Tornado DAO urged the community to hire a team of lawyers to legally challenge the blocking of the service.

Later the Coin Center, a crypto-industry-oriented advocacy organization, announced its intention to challenge the U.S. restrictions.

A rally in support of Tornado Cash cryptocurrency mixer developer Alexei Pertsev, who was arrested in the Netherlands, will take place in Amsterdam on August 20.

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