To all of you that enjoy and covet your privacy, I want to let you know that the Treasury Department of the United States of America has left your privacy behind and is now telling you where you can get your money and where you can or cannot spend it. Wait for part 2 of this saga.
Does this smell like China to you? Whether you are law abiding or nefarious, you will now have to tow the line just as if you were a Jihadist Terrorist. You can not spend nor receive money without the possibility of going to prison. (smell test)
New sanctions on Tornado Cash by the US Treasury Dept. will have a chilling effect on honest and upright citizens that value their privacy. In a press release by the Dept., "U.S. Treasury Sanctions Notorious Virtual Currency Mixer , Tornado Cash" many honest citizens have been labeled as criminals because they value their privacy.
Since the use of an Ethereum contract that is truly decentralized is considered a tool and not a person, this sanction is really a sanction against using a tool. Such as a hammer.
Yes, a hammer can do a lot of damage.
And yet hammers are used all day everyday by millions of people and only a few people are injured or killed. They could have been killed by a car too, but do we ban the use of cars for everyone even though more that 43,000 people are killed each year in the US alone by cars and trucks. Few of these deaths are criminal. Unless you add DUI"s.
By this same logic, guns kill people. And yet all the US cities that have strict gun laws seem to have the most gun violence and death. How is that working our for you Mr. Government Regulator?
I want to keep this brief. Call your Representative and your Senator. Tell them to stop the over reach of Agencies and appointed individuals in the absence of detailed laws passed by Congress. (yes , this is the way law making works according to the US Supreme Court.)
Just as a gun can harm, it can also keep innocents from harm. What will you do if someone sends you some crypto via Tornado Cash; Unknown you , since you only gave a wallet address. And now, someone has done just that. An anon has been sending .1ETH to various celebs wallet or .eth addresses. Now that the Fed has sanctioned these address, the recipients must report this violation and hopefully, they can prove in a court of law that this was not their doing.
Will you go to jail for violation of these new sanctions. Many people that had USDC in the Tornado wallet have now had their funds frozen. They did not commit a crime, but they will have to prove their innocence.
If this were not enough, now Eth has more troubles. (maybe)
New developments in Ethereum sparks more debate on decentralization. The 2nd largest network provider announced on Aug 23d that they will not allow crypto mining of any sort on their network. The largest share of Eth is mined on AWS and the German company Hetzner is # 2. So, my question is this. 2 commercial network providers can control more than 60% of the traffic for Eth. Is this a problem?
Next up, Mt. Gox. The last day of August it announced the probable release of repayment Bitcoins during the 2 half of September. If this is a firehose release vs a controlled stream, the newly funded wallets could start a dum and Btc might drag Eth down with it. What say you?
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