U.S. Secretary of State Tweets, Deletes, Tweets About Tornado Cash

In a since-deleted tweet, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken seemed to say that virtual currency mixer Tornado Cash was sponsored by North Korea.

The tweet was deleted 63 minutes later and replaced with one alleging that Tornado Cash had been used to launder money by a hacking group sponsored by North Korea, CoinDesk reported Monday (Aug. 8).

In the first tweet, using the acronym for Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), the official name of North Korea, Blinken said the U.S. Treasury Department had “sanctioned virtual currency mixer Tornado Cash, which is a U.S.-sanctioned, DPRK state-sponsored hacking group, used by the DPRK to launder money.”

https://web.archive.org/web/20220808155413/https:/twitter.com/SecBlinken/status/1556661834287140868

In the tweet that replaced that now-deleted one, Blinken said that the Treasury Department had sanctioned Tornado Cash, “which has been used to launder money for a U.S.-sanctioned DPRK state-sponsored cyber hacking group.”

https://twitter.com/SecBlinken/status/1556677862345801728?cxt=HHwWgICw7ZSRt5orAAAA

The tweets came on the same day the Treasury Department issued a press release announcing that it had sanctioned Tornado Cash.

As PYMNTS reported in January, mixing services are — depending on one’s outlook — a vital way to preserve privacy or a tool used for little more than evading taxes or laundering money.

Read more: PYMNTS Crypto Crime Series: When Privacy Counts, Crypto Users Turn to Mixing Services

Most work in roughly the same way: Take all the crypto all clients send in, swirl it around, and send it out to users separately. That way, the blockchain loses the connection from one transaction to the next, effectively anonymizing the digital asset.

Tornado Cash was also in the news in March when Bloomberg reported that one of its co-founders, Roman Semonov, said “there’s not much we can do” regarding sanctions against Russia.

See also: Today in Crypto: Jamaica Incentivizes New Digital Currency Users; Tornado Cash Co-Founder Says No to Russian Sanctions

Per the report, Semonov said that’s because the Tornado Cash project comes from decisions made by pre-written software programs instead of individuals.

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