Tornado Cash Ethereum Token Down Over 50% After Sanctions

A week after the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions of the Tornado Cash website, the price of the token that underpins the system plunged 56%, ending the week at a high of $31.56 and ending the week at CoinMarketCap. According to, the minimum is $13.09.

Tornado Cash (TORN) is an ERC20 token and the native token of the Tornado Cash DAO, used for governance and voting management. It is currently the 691st largest cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $15.5 million.

After the US Treasury Department announced sanctions and Github took the repository offline by removing it from the Tornado Cash website, the price of the token began to fall.

Launched in 2019, Tornado Cash is a blockchain protocol for sending and receiving anonymous transactions by mixing Ethereum tokens with pools of other tokens and anonymizing users.

Amid sanctions on Tornado Cash, the U.S. Treasury has accused North Korean hacker group Lazarus Group of laundering more than $103.8 million in money through the Horizon Harmony Bridge and Nomad Token Bridge hacks this summer. I mentioned.

After a discussion by the Tornado Cash community, the group’s Discord server disappeared and strangers also took the forums of the Tornado Cash community website offline. At the same time, members of the developer group behind Tornado Cash were brought in. custody by Dutch law enforcement agencies.

The US Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Intelligence and Research (FIOD) said a criminal investigation into Tornado Cash began in June 2022.

This crypto winter looks particularly tough for the Tornado Cash community. Sanctions, shutdowns, and arrests, coupled with the current bear market, seem to have hit the project as owners continue to flee.