There’s something alluring about North Korea for those on the edges of the western crypto world. Earlier this year, the hacker Virgil Griffith was sentenced to five years for helping Kim Jong-Un’s government evade sanctions, while Tether, issuer of the third-largest cryptocurrency, has decided to pick a fight over its right to send money to related entities. Now, there’s a lawsuit against the U.S. Treasury as well as Secretary Janet Yellen for the department’s sanctions, which are meant to target North Korea’s hacking army but are potentially so wide-ranging they verge on Orwellian for their potential to stifle free speech. On Wednesday, David Hoffman, a crypto evangelist and podcaster, and Coin Center, a think tank for the industry, filed suit against the Treasury Department over sanctions it issued earlier this year against Tornado Cash, a tool that anonymizes cryptocurrency transactions. According to the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, the department’s sanctioning arm, the blacklisting is a response to the Lazarus Group, the North Korean hacking army it claims has stolen and laundered some $500 million. The problem, though, is that Tornado Cash isn’t a company or a person — it’s code that lives on the ethereum blockchain, and there’s no way for anyone to control or destroy the protocol.
Full opinion : Have U.S. Crypto Sanctions Gone Too Far?
