- After the sanctions imposed on the crypto mixer Tornado Cash and the crypto wallets added to the persecution that the US government has done for anonymous or private cryptocurrencies, the question arises, what does the sanction mean for privacy coins?
- Educator Seth For Privacy believes the move will only make privacy coins succeed in the marketplace.
One of the key points for the creation, expansion and evolution of cryptocurrencies is their ability to free users from traditional banking systems. Pseudo-anonymity is also a salient point for many of those who use it on a daily basis. The wallets do not have a name, so the operations are difficult to trace.
Even mechanisms such as Tornado Cash provide extreme privacy: money is lost. Hackers, for example, are users of this type of application. For this reason (among others), the US Treasury Department decided sanction the mixer of cryptocurrency transactions as well as the wallets that have worked with it.
Why ban privacy?
Educator Seth For Privacy, dedicated to educating users on the importance of privacy and a contributor to Monero, questioned the move. “Why does the government want to stop people from using a privacy tool on Ethereum? The US government wouldn’t sanction this tool if it didn’t work.”he highlighted.
Although cryptocurrencies are committed to anonymity, they also have a great commitment to transparency: everything that is transferred through the blockchain can be seen by everyone. Tornado Cash hides one of these principles.
Interview with Seth For Privacy
Monero and Zcashthe two largest private blockchains, have been in the eye of the storm more than once and their tokens are considered to be those used by hackers. Although not all exchanges in the world sell them, they are in the largest ones such as Binance, KuCoin or Kraken.
“Financial privacy is essential to many of the goals of cryptocurrencies, and a human right. In many ways, the Tornado sanction is a continuation of what we’ve already been seeing. They are not only sanctioning the entity behind Tornado Cash, but specifically the Tornado Cash smart contract addresses. This is really a big deal for anyone using Ethereum and interacting with these smart contracts.”Seth pointed out.
In an interview with CoinDesk, Seth provided some key points on why he thinks the US government’s attitude is overblown and why he thinks the move will only make privacy coins a hit in the market.
For Seth it is important that a person be able to choose what information they reveal about their finances, however the current system has accustomed us to not having control over this since financial firms such as banks have free access to this information, “information they often sell that data to other companies to build profiles about us and sell it to other companies”.
“Our data is completely out of our hands. Privacy-preserving cryptocurrencies, specifically Monero, give you control over who knows what and how you are spending your money”.
Seth pointed out that everyone needs to be able to control who knows about their spending.s, and there are cases in which this is urgent, such as a woman who needs to escape from an environment of violence or those who are politically persecuted where governments have stripped them of their human rights, stripping the freedom of their own population .
“Tools like privacy-preserving cryptocurrencies can be a valuable tool to fight against that and to fight for human rights and human freedom.Seth points out.
For the educator, the situation in which Tornado Cash has been involved may be an effect like Streisand, in which something becomes popular because it is prohibited.
“We might see more people who might otherwise be wondering: Why does the government want to ban this? Why do they want to stop people from using a privacy tool on Ethereum? It will really shock a lot of people that these tools are here”.
Privacy, as Seth For Privacy marks it, is a right. As is the use of a tool to achieve said privacy. The United States, assuring that this generates risks for the country, has decided to ban it. What will happen now?
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