An anonymous Tornado Cash user has been sending small amounts of Ether to the publicly known crypto addresses of Logan Paul, Beeple, Randi Zuckerberg, Jimmy Fallon and others.
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The U.S. government might be about to learn that sanctioning a coin mixer is far easier said than done.
On Monday, the Treasury Department imposed restrictions on Tornado Cash, amid allegations it's been used by North Korea to launder stolen cryptocurrencies.
Under these measures, it's against the law for U.S. citizens to interact with this service — but now, high-profile celebrities and tech entrepreneurs are being unwillingly dragged into the row.
An anonymous Tornado Cash user has been sending small amounts of Ether to the publicly known crypto addresses of Logan Paul, Beeple, Randi Zuckerberg, Jimmy Fallon and others.
Cozomo de' Medici — the pseudonymous NFT collector who is apparently Snoop Dogg — has also been caught up in the fracas.
This is a tactic that's known as "dusting" — and in theory, these transactions would mean that they've unwittingly fallen afoul of U.S. sanctions... perhaps without even knowing.
The bigger question now is whether they'll need to take action to stress that they're not Tornado Cash users, or whether the Treasury Department will put their crypto trading habits under greater levels of scrutiny.
Indicating there's a big downside to human-readable crypto addresses, @depression2019 wrote on Twitter:
"Been accumulating a pretty big list of major CT users ETH addresses and their .ens official addresses. Withdrawing 0.1 ETH to all of them from Tornado throughout the rest of the day."
While the likes of Armstrong and Fallon have both received 0.1 ETH, this may not necessarily have been @depression2019's doing.
'Send Me 0.1 ETH!'
Some on Crypto Twitter argued that this incident shows the need for investors to have a way of blocking incoming transfers — meaning deposits are only made with their approval.
Others, who have no intention of visiting the U.S. anyway, quipped that they were more than happy to be sent 0.1 ETH as well — worth about $170 at current market rates.
The U.S. has been criticized for sanctioning Tornado Cash, with some crypto enthusiasts claiming this could be in violation of the First Amendment.
Others warn that this undermines legitimate use cases for the coin mixer, which ensures the sender and recipient of crypto transactions remains anonymous.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently revealed that he had used Tornado Cash to make donations to those affected by the Ukraine crisis — primarily because he wanted to protect the recipients.
