People applying for licenses must submit thorough details about the transactions involving the cryptocurrency mixer, such as the wallet address, the date and time of the transaction, the total amount of cryptocurrency sent to Tornado Cash, and previous transaction hashes. The government also stated that U.S. citizens would not be prohibited from viewing the Tornado Cash website should it reactivate online or access its archives.
The troubled decentralized protocol was placed on the Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) list on August 8, shocking the cryptocurrency industry. As a result of the action, American citizens were no longer permitted to deal with Tornado Cash-related wallets or contracts. It was the first time the code had been added to the SDN list by OFAC.
According to the crypto community, code is speech and should be protected under the first amendment. The subsequent detention of a Tornado developer in the Netherlands gave the impression that the police targeted engineers who worked on the protocol's code.
The head of policy at the Blockchain Association in Washington, Jake Chervinsky, argued that since the United States was not involved in the arrest, it was likely unrelated to Tornado Cash. According to the Treasury Department's comments, OFAC is fighting the money laundering of cybercrime revenues rather than cracking down on open-source projects.