The issuer of the USDT stablecoin, Tether, refused to freeze addresses associated with the Tornado Cash transaction mixing service without appropriate requests from law enforcement agencies.
"Tether firmly adheres to the decision not to freeze Tornado Cash addresses, awaits instructions from law enforcement agencies" — Tether (@Tether_to) August 24, 2022
"So far, OFAC has not reported that the issuer should freeze secondary market addresses published in the SDN list or managed by individuals and organizations that have fallen under OFAC sanctions. In addition, no US law enforcement agency or regulator has made such a request, despite our close contacts," the statement said.
According to a press release, the company considers blocking addresses unilaterally to be a "reckless and destructive" measure. According to experts, such actions can negatively affect the investigations of law enforcement agencies.
Tether criticized the Circle company behind the USDC stablecoin, which blacklisted addresses associated with the mixing service:
"We consider Circle’s measures taken without instructions from the authorities to be premature. They can jeopardize the work of regulators and law enforcement agencies."
Unstoppable Finance Development Manager Patrick Hansen stressed that, despite his position, Tether actively blocks addresses on the Ethereum network. According to this indicator, the company is almost ten times ahead of the USDC issuer.
Infura and Alchemy infrastructure platforms have blocked RPC requests to Tornado Cash. The Uniswap non-custodial exchange has also closed access to its platform for a number of relevant addresses. Similar measures were taken by DEX dYdX.
