Kraken CEO Jesse Powell Slams Tornado Cash Sanctions
US Cryptocurrency
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Kraken CEO Jesse Powell Slams Tornado Cash Sanctions
Kraken CEO Jesse Powell called the US government's ban on cryptocurrency transaction privacy tool Tornado Cash "unconstitutional". The US Treasury Department said on August 8 that it took measures because criminals used Privacy Mixer to "launder more than $7 billion worth of virtual currency since its creation in 2019."
In fact, $7billion is roughly the total amount of money passed through privacy tools; But according to blockchain experts Elliptic, just $1.5 billion of that amount was actually false. Powell described the ban in May as "mostly a knee-jerk" response to the collapse of the Terra ecosystem, adding that the removal of Tornado's source code from Git hub, where it was originally hosted, " was not necessary."
Powell joins a long list of crypto advocates who have condemned the sanctions. Uniswap inventor Hayden Adams stressed his belief in the need for legal privacy tools. Adams called the sanctions a “freedom of speech issue,” echoing several industry leaders on Twitter, who cited the 1996 Federal court case “Bernsteinv U.S.,” which established “source code as speech”protected by the First Amendment.
Several crypto advocacy groups have also pushed back the US Treasury Department's Tornado Cash ban. "Whenever the government blocks the publication of computer code on a public website, the First Amendment has clear implications, "the Electronic Frontier Foundation said. Meanwhile, the Coinage Center has said OFAC has exceeded its limit and "potentially violates the constitutional rights to due process and free speech."
Kraken CEO ,US government, cryptocurrency, US treasury Department, Transactions, Tornado cash