Bankless - Tornado Cash BANNED By OFAC... Is this the War on Crypto?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Bankless Nation, Defy is under attack. On Monday, the Office of Foreign Asset Control, OFAC, banned tornado cash. What does it mean to ban tornado cash? Well, I'm glad you asked because that's a really, really good question. Taking OFAC at face value, it means that they've added tornado cash to its specifically designated nationals list, a running tally of blacklisted people, entities, and cryptocurrency addresses. As a result, all U.S. persons and entities are prohibited from interacting with tornado cash or any Ethereum wallet tied to the protocol.

Starting point is 00:00:32 Those who do can go to jail. You can go to jail for touching tornado cash now. The reasoning behind this move, OFAC stated that TORNAOCAGASH has been the go-to mixer for cyber criminals looking to launder the proceeds of crime, as well as helping to enable hackers, including those currently under U.S. sanctions to launder the proceeds of their cybercrimes

Starting point is 00:00:52 by covering up the origin and transfer of this illicit virtual currency, meaning ETH. Since its creation back in 2019, Tornado Cash has reportedly laundered more than $7 billion worth of virtual currencies. Ryan, who's away on vacation, is calling this the opening shot of Big Brother's assault on crypto. Collins Belton on Twitter, who is a fantastic crypto lawyer, said, while I'm not surprised,

Starting point is 00:01:12 this is arguably the most significant legal action that has occurred in crypto and could have absolutely gargantuan ripple effects for everything from dev liability to First Amendment implications of code publication. Jerry Brito of CoinCenter said, today's action does not seem so much as a sanction against a person or entity with agency. It appears instead to be the sanctioning of a tool that is neutral in character and that could be put to good or bad uses like any other technology. Bankless Nation, this is a very special edition of Bankless. We're bringing you a new format today on the show.

Starting point is 00:01:44 These two individuals who I just mentioned, Collins Belton and Jerry Brito, are interviewed in this episode. These interviews have been chopped up and edited into the various themes that this whole event has surfaced. Themes like, what does it mean to ban a smart contract? What is the line that is being crossed by OFAC? Why is privacy so important even when it enables actors like North Korea to launder money? Where is the due process? And what effects will this have on defy-app developers and users like you and me? And of course, what we as an industry need to do about it.

Starting point is 00:02:14 You'll hear from Collins and Jerry jump in at a number of different places in the show as we navigate through this very hairy but critically important topic, the topic of user sovereignty, privacy, and decentralized finance. But first, before we begin, a moment to be a moment to be a moment to be a very hard. speed run through some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. Rocket Pool is Ethereum's decentralized validator network where you deposit ETH and you get REath in return and you can take that REath into a defy. And if you run a node, you let other people deposit their ETH into your node and you get to

Starting point is 00:02:42 charge them 15% for staking rewards as payment for your node operating services. And then you can take that REth and use the across bridge to join over $2.3 billion in the arbitram ecosystem. Across, of course, is the fastest cheapest and most secure cross-chain bridge. of the safest ways to bridge your hard-earned assets in the world of crypto. And of course, Arbitrum is where you want to be. With over 35,000 contracts and 1 million unique addresses, Arbitrum is leading the way into the age of Roll-Uks.

Starting point is 00:03:09 You know how I know these numbers? Because I watched the Arbitrums talk at ECC, which you should also go watch, but not before you're done watching this. But when you do watch that video, make sure it's on a privacy-first browser, which is why you should be using Brave. It blocks all the browser ads, it's got a native Web3 wallet,

Starting point is 00:03:25 and it puts the user first the Web3 way. You know what else puts the user first? Ledger hardware wallets and the Ledger Live ecosystem. I know Ledger is a great product because I have literally nine of them and I have 99% of my crypto assets on my Ledger wallets. And the Ledger Live ecosystem is all you really need when it comes to living a bankless life, such as buying with Fiat, swapping, and staking. But for the rest of you that are sitting on stable coins because the market is scary right now, make sure you're using a decentralized bankless stablecoin. May I suggest die from MakerDow? The most tried and tested stable coin in existence. But with Maker, you don't have to hide your stables on the Ethereum layer

Starting point is 00:03:59 one. Maker is building thy portals so you can mint thy natively across all the layer two's, so you can make sure that your assets don't go down another 90%, but you still get to go do all the defy things across the L2verse. Okay, first we got to start at the basics. What is OFAC and what did it just announce? Well, so OFAC is a division of treasury, right? So it's the Office of Foreign Asset Control within Treasury Department. And it's basically charged with overseeing and managing all the U.S.'s sanctions programs, right? So they're the office of Treasury that manages that whole process, make sure that the public knows who's sanctions

Starting point is 00:04:37 and make sure that the public is complying with the sanctions. As part of the Treasury, same organization as the IRS, and so it has to deal with money, and it makes sure that all of the people that are under its control as the United States citizens aren't doing things that undermine the power and legitimacy of the United States of America. And so, like I said, the IRS is part of Treasury, but also so is OFAC,

Starting point is 00:05:01 and it basically just sets rules that we cannot break that make sure that there's no such thing as, like, weapons financing, like drug trafficking, blah, blah, blah, all the bad things. Important note that they are not elected. Just like Treasury, they are not elected people. And so this rule, this, it's not regulation, it's not a rule, It's just like a thing that is now something that we have to follow. On Monday, OFAC releases a press release titled

Starting point is 00:05:27 U.S. Treasury Sanctions Notorious Virtual Currency Mixer Tornado Cash. Notorious, huh? Yeah, notorious for being awesome. Here's the thing. With a good privacy tool, of course criminals are likely to flock to it just as regular human beings are likely to flock to it. The reason why you would do so is because it's effective. You're not going to go to a tool that's known for having a back door or a hole.

Starting point is 00:05:51 and want real privacy. Or maybe not awesome, but at least useful for the individual to achieve some level of privacy, albeit also useful for North Korea to launder a ton of money. Their press release reads, Today, the United States Department of the Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control, OFAC, sanctioned virtual currency mixer tornado cash,

Starting point is 00:06:08 which has been used to launder more than 7 billion worth of virtual currency since its creation. This includes over 455 million stolen by the Lazarus Group, a North Korean state-sponsored hacking group that was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2019, in the largest known virtual currency heist to date. Tornado Cash was subsequently used to launder more than 96 million of malicious cyberactors funds derived from the June 24th Harmony Bridge heist and at least $8 million from the August 2nd Nomad Heist,

Starting point is 00:06:35 the one that just happened last week. Their press release continues and says today's action is being taken pursuant to Executive Order 13694 as amended and follows OFAC's May 6 designation of virtual currency mixer blender.io, also known as Blender. Interestingly, Blender, I actually went back to look at Blender's sanctions announcement. Blender was another mixer that had a sanctions issue in May. And it's kind of interesting that they actually somewhat took this approach there. They actually just named the website Blender as an entity. But I think a lot of us assumed it was because we knew there was a company there and kind of understood Blender's model.

Starting point is 00:07:09 Tornado is a little different in that, you know, they listed, you know, they essentially went to Ether scan, scraped a bunch of addresses, listed a bunch of them. And they actually, you know, interestingly, have not seemingly sanctioned the death. or the company behind Tornado Cash. Secretary of State Brian Nelson says, despite public assurances otherwise, tornado cash has repeatedly failed to impose effective controls designed to stop it from laundering money for malicious actors on a regular basis

Starting point is 00:07:33 and without basic measures to address its risks. Treasury will continue to aggressively pursue actions against mixers that launder virtual currency for criminals and those who assist them. Okay, so now that we understand OFAC, what is Tornado Cash and how does it work? Tornado Cash is known as a mixer or a tumbler. There's a reason why it's called Tornado Cash.

Starting point is 00:07:51 Imagine a bunch of cash circling around in a tornado, you don't really know whose cash is who. Tornado Cash has a bunch of pools. It has a .1-Eth pool, it has a 1-Eth pool, a 10-Eth pool, and a hundred-eath pool. And people would come and they would put denominations of whatever these bills are into Tornado Cash, and they would just let them sit in the pool.

Starting point is 00:08:10 And then at a later point in time, they would withdraw that same denomination from the pool. The cool thing about Tornado Cash is it uses fancy cryptography magic to give you what's called a note. So when you came and deposited 10-Eath into the tornado cache 10-eath pool, when you did that, you would receive a note that you would like download and save to your computer. It's like a plain text file. And when you would come back to tornado cache at a later moment in time, you would return that note back to Tornado Cash. And Tornado Cash would know that this person

Starting point is 00:08:40 has deposited 10-Ether, and they have not yet withdrawn 10-Ether because I have not yet seen this note before. And then you deposit the note, and then Tornado Cash gives you 10-Ether back. From the external standpoint, tornado cash just looks like a bunch of people are sending 10 ETH in and then a bunch of different people are withdrawing 10 ETH out. And there's no way to really connect who is who. So it was a way to achieve privacy with some of your ether. You could also use Dye. You could also use USDC, which is an important point of this story. Tornado Cash was created by a Russian team, but I believe they actually live in America. And I've seen them at Ethereum Denver. I've seen them at ETHCCC. They're a part of the Ethereum

Starting point is 00:09:19 community. They're a part of crypto Twitter. They are not criminals. They are known people who just build open source software. Even though that they built tornado cash, they are actually not being targeted by OFAC, which is, again, an interesting part of the story, which we'll cover later on. So who are the bad guys using tornado cash? According to chain analysis, 7.6 billion dollars of ether has been tumbled through tornado cash since its inception in August 2019, which really makes this tweet from the Treasury Department hit really hard, because it's implying that every single dollar that flowed through tornado cash is illicit mundery laundering, which is not. I ask Alex Svanovick from Nansen this question, like how much of money going through tornado cash is

Starting point is 00:09:58 actually illicit? And he said that 35% of funds that has been flowing through tornado cash that has been accounted for as some sort of defy hack or exploit that has used tornado cash for explicitly obfuscating and laundering money. Now, that is not also including any sort of petty money laundering and tax evasion that people are probably also using tornado cash for it. I've used tornado cash. I've used it a number of times. Am I a criminal trying to hide all of my money? No, I'm a very public person, and I have David Hoffman.eath, and if all of my crypto money was associated with David Hoffman.eath, there would not be a single transaction on a theorem that I would be able to do in private. So I've used tornado cash to put ether into different wallets

Starting point is 00:10:41 that I go do things. I buy a token, I trade an NFT, and I don't have to worry about crypto Twitter being like, oh, David's buying whatever, whatever. I just don't want that weight on me. I do not want the eyes of the world watching what I get up to in my shenanigans on my off time.

Starting point is 00:10:56 Thank you. General financial activity should not be public. You guys should not be able to see what I do, and I've used tornado cash to just have a little bit more privacy in my life. Here's a meme from Nourage at Coin Center, which I thought summed this up pretty well. Eric Connor also tweeted about how he's used

Starting point is 00:11:12 Tornado Cash to just generate new clean addresses for all of his ETH staking on ETH2. He just wanted a blank slate so he can do the same thing, buy NFTs, buy tokens, just do general DFI stuff without having the eyes of the world upon him. Reza tweets out, completely illegal until today, reasons to use tornado cash. You get paid in crypto, but you don't want your employer to know all of your financial details. Hmm, smart. Also, you pay for a service in ETH, but you don't want this service that you're paying for to see everything that you've ever done on chain ever. These are all valid use cases for privacy,

Starting point is 00:11:45 and now with Tornado Cash gone, we don't have any good ways to do this. If we can't hide our financial transactions from aggrieved parties who have control, then we don't have freedom. A very critical part of this story is that Tornado Cash is not a typical thing to be added to the OFAC SDN list. Previously, all members of the OFACSDN list have been people or entities, things with like an address or a social security number. What Jerry Brito calls somebody with agency. Let's dive into this part of this conversation with Jerry Brito. SDN stands for specially designated national. Basically, it is the list of sanctioned people. In practice, the way it works is that financial institutions, so banks and things like it,

Starting point is 00:12:26 certainly check that list. When you go through your KYC, when you're opening up an account in a financial institution, first thing they're going to do, among the different things they're going to check about you is are you on the SDN list? And up to this point, The SDN list has been people, and this entity is not a human. This entity is a bunch of smart contracts on Ethereum. Can you talk about the nuances that that brings? And is that really why this is such a big deal? Is the nature of the entity that is now on this SDN list?

Starting point is 00:12:59 Yeah. Basically at root, yes. I have not followed OFAC designations for decades to know that they've never designated and But as far as I'm aware, that is the case, right? Typically, when somebody's added to the SDN list, it's a person or a company or some kind of group. So somebody with agency, right? Somebody that you can identify as a person that you, with intents, with motivations, and somebody who you can decide, you know, I'm not going to interact with this person. And we've seen in the past a few months ago when they sanctioned blender.io, which is a mixing service, Blender.io was centralized. So it was a organization, right? What you have now with tornado cash is interesting because I think that they are, in some respects, identifying a group or a group of persons, but then they are also identifying smart contracts. And they're putting all these things together, but they don't go together, right? So it's really odd. They say that tornado cash is sanctioned.

Starting point is 00:14:08 I'm not sure what that means. I think they could say, Tornado Cash is a group of people. It's, you know, that provide a service. And so maybe we can get into that, that is. But for example, they list a website. So clearly, if they're sanctioning this website, and we can get to later also about why they're sanctioning it

Starting point is 00:14:28 and what's the due process here of any. But there's a website. And so clearly, if there's sanctioning a website, well, the website has somebody behind it. Right? So that makes sense, right? But then, in addition to all this, they're listing a set of smart contract addresses, some of which are not under anybody's control. And so they are associated with the idea of tornado cash, but there's nobody there.

Starting point is 00:14:55 There's nobody home. It's a robot. And I know this is hard, I think, for, I think you and the audience listening to this probably understand this exactly what I'm talking about. But I think it's hard to convey to some folks who are used to being able to say. say, oh, we can sanction or target blender.io. They want to do the same thing to tornado cash. And, you know, quite honestly, at least through what's come out so far, ignoring the subtleties and nuances in the difference there. And let's go into those subtleties because I think what people are really concerned about is, you know, perhaps many people are concerned about I would like to be able to use tornado cash. so please don't ban that.

Starting point is 00:15:37 But I think many others are also concerned as the precedent that this brings to the industry. Why is the precedent for this so massive? What are the implications of this? Essentially what is happening here is that without any real due process, without any kind of input, and by complete surprise, what Treasury is done here is that they have banned a particular application on the Ethereum network. You know, and really, you can't use it anymore. And if you read statements from Treasury, they will do this again and again. So, in essence, they are banning, again, without any due process, without any consideration on the part of the legislature, etc.

Starting point is 00:16:19 They are banning a class of software. And it's a class of software that, sure, I mean, let's not forget, it does have illicit uses. But so do, you know, so do cars. So do cash. So does. So do banks. So do so many other things. It's because it's being done

Starting point is 00:16:35 without any due process that it's really problematic because what's the next thing they're going to say is sanctioned. A smart contract is a robot, not a person. It is software that resides on the Ethereum blockchain. If a contract is credibly decentralized,

Starting point is 00:16:50 then the original offers of that contract could be hit with a bus and that service would continue to work. Today's action by OFAC does not really go after any person or entity with agency. Instead, it seems to be sanctioning a tool that is neutral in character, the ripple effects of this OFAC ruling have already been felt.

Starting point is 00:17:08 Circle, the issuer of USC, has immediately frozen the $75,000 of USC that's sitting inside of tornado cash. Anyone who's deposited this USDC into tornado cash with the hopes of withdrawing it later to a clean address has now had their USC frozen. So why did Circle do this? Why did they freeze the USC inside of tornado cash? Because they have to. They are a regulated US entity and violating OFAC is a BFD. Circle is huge supporters of DFI and this entire industry, and they are a big advocate for crypto on Capitol Hill. But you got to pick your battles. And going up against OFAC over $75,000 is not the right battle to pick. This is ultimately how the technology sector becomes an extension of the state. U.S.C. could either comply with the government or shut

Starting point is 00:17:51 down its business. It's a pretty obvious trade. This OFAC effect has also spread to Infura and Alchemy to node service providers that help you process your transactions from metamac. or most other wallets. They've stopped relaying transactions to Tornado Cash because, again, they have to now. Some people say that centralized endpoint providers, like inferior or alchemy, make Defi not decentralized, but this simply highlights the importance of running your own node. If you want to use Tornado Cash, you'll need to run your own node now, or you'll have to find an RPC provider who's outside the United States. But if you are a U.S. citizen and you're inside of the United States, it doesn't matter because you can't touch Tornado Cash either way

Starting point is 00:18:26 because it's illegal to do that now. And this is all par for the course. These are all relatively expected outcomes from this OFAC decision, but here's one that's a little bit more unexpected. Bantag recently tweeted out that the GitHub accounts of people who contributed to Tornado cache repositories are getting their GitHub accounts deleted. People, developers that published open source code are getting D platform from GitHub. Romon Seminov, one of the lead devs of Tornado cache, tweeted, my GitHub account is just suspended? Is writing open source code illegal now? Let's jump into my conversations with Collins and Jerry about the same subject, because this is not the first time that open source developers and cryptographers have gone toe to toe with the U.S. government.

Starting point is 00:19:06 Can you place this into just the historical precedent of legal arguments about open source software versus top-down government regulation trying to silence open source software? Like, how does this fit? How does this, how is this the same fight that we've always been fighting? And how is this specific instance different than previous fights? Yeah, it's similar, but not the same. What you're referring to? You're referring to, or the early crypto wars, where cryptography had always been considered ammunition, meaning basically a national security defense type of thing that could not be exported, right? So the problem with that is that cryptography is ultimately just speech. The way that I think a lot of early pioneers in Internet space,

Starting point is 00:19:51 especially the folks who were writing PGP, highlighted this was, yes, by putting it on a t-shirt, although I think that was more DCSS, which is the encryption breaking for DVDs. But what they did was that they printed it out as a book, and then they mailed it overseas. And they said, okay, so are you going to put me in jail for publishing books? And I think that is what put it into relief such that the government dropped the case. Here, it's a little different because it's not that there is a prior restraint on speech where OFAC is saying you can't publish this kind of stuff, but they're clearly saying that if you publish this kind of stuff, we're going to ban it in such a way that nobody's going to be able to republish it,

Starting point is 00:20:40 and nobody is going to be able to use it. So that's going to create a chilling effect on speech. And Supreme Court has found, even if you have a government action, it creates a chilling effect that essentially prevents people from speaking, that could be considered a violation of the First Amendment. Okay, let's zoom back out and unpack some of the differences about having a centralized entity or person on the OFAC SDN list versus something like tornado cash. Eric Forhey said it well.

Starting point is 00:21:08 The headline reads that Treasury sanctions tornado cash. In reality, tornado cash is not a person nor a business entity. It's an open-source software tool. It cannot be sanctioned. It does not respond to subpoena or legal request. It is privacy-seeking Americans who have been sanctioned. A frequent take from Bitcoiners that I love is that there's no such thing as actually banning Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:21:28 There's only countries banning their citizens from accessing Bitcoin. Tornado Cash wasn't banned today. Seeking privacy was. But the idiosyncrasies continue. Kobe, facetious as always, tweets out, what happens if I put one eth into tornado cash and I withdraw it to Gainesi's address?

Starting point is 00:21:44 Does he go to jail? Sounds like a pretty good deal for me. Low cost and no more Gainesi. Gainesi is a famous crypto trader. I'm not sure if Kobe and Gainesi actually had beef. Kobe might just be playing around, but the point stands. U.S. Americans are not allowed to interact

Starting point is 00:21:57 with a tornado cash contract, and that includes receiving money from it. Right before this interview, I discovered that someone was putting in many, many, many deposits of 0.1Eth into tornado cash, then withdrawing them to some big name addresses. Jimmy Fallon got a deposit, making him in violation of OFAC. Shaquille O'Neill got one, boom, violation.

Starting point is 00:22:17 Brian Armstrong from Coinbase got one. Boom, violation. Chappelle, violation. But then I noticed that bankless.eath also got sent 0.1Eath from tornado cash, and so did I. And so did Ryan. Making us all criminals, I guess. There's no real way to stop this. Well, this is kind of funny, and it does make a farce of the OFAC decision. It highlights what's really going on here. There's an unstoppable piece of software that's running on the internet, and it is adjacent to so many of us who use DFI for our financial activity. Parts of this story are just simple controversy.

Starting point is 00:22:49 Defi people want privacy and OFAC wants to stop money laundering. These two parties are going to collide in their interests. But the other part of this story is that we need better clarity and rules around stuff like this to even make them enforceable.

Starting point is 00:23:01 Jerry from CoinCenter says, I'm supposed to report this to OFAC that I've received this illicit money in violation of the OFAC rule. Well, I'm just not gonna do that. Hopefully I don't go over to jail over that, but if I do, I hope they let me take my studio with me. Another important part of the story

Starting point is 00:23:16 is the phrase that both Jerry and Colin used in their interviews. Chilling effect. The way that Jerry and Collins used this phrase made me think it's more than just a descriptive phrase. In context of regulation, chilling effect is the concept of deterring free speech and association rights protected by the First Amendment as a result of government laws or actions that appear to a target expression. Let's listen in. Suddenly, we're in a world where open source tools may be subject to being placed on a sanctions list. And we already started to see knock-on effects from this. You know, we've got GitHub, not just stopping the repos or removing the accounts of the main devs, but also people

Starting point is 00:23:51 who have just randomly contributed to this type of, you know, project. That type of chilling effect is, I think, going to be significant, not just for, you know, crypto, but for open source software. Matthew Green, who we've recently had on the show, said, using sanction power to take code off public source code distribution sites feels like a pretty blatant attack on the First Amendment. He's talking, of course, about the deep platforming of the tornado cash developers from GitHub. He continues, it's also a pretty simple. stupid attack. It's literally a decentralized version control system. 30 years of hard legal work to establish First Amendment protections around software distribution blown up in a day by GitHub and Microsoft.

Starting point is 00:24:27 What we should all be worried about is how scared this may make our open source software devs. We need these developers to feel empowered and comfortable in writing open source financial tools. Open source financial tools are the reason why we are all here. If this chilling effect goes too far, it can slow down innovation and progress at this industry. In a moment, when this industry and the world needs it the most. Standing up for Tornado Cash isn't about protecting this random DFIFi app that you may or may not have used. Tornado Cash is a fantastic example of a good product that people use.

Starting point is 00:24:59 Tornado Cash enables privacy for everyone that use it. But this goes to the heart of the issue. Do we as a country prioritize global political desires of the United States nation over the wants and desires of its citizens and individuals? I don't think we do. This country has always stood upon individual freedom and autonomy, and this new sanction from OFAC is putting the state over the people, which is inherently anti-American. Well, what about the privacy of people who want to use crypto and want to do so protecting their privacy? I don't know what they would say to that.

Starting point is 00:25:31 I think something they might say to that is, look, you can use Venmo. You don't have to use crypto. But of course, that is incredibly anti-innovation, really on American, I would say, on American. perspective. Some last few takeaways to discuss. Eric Connor tweets, I think today is a good reminder that we most always prioritize decentralization. Deployed contracts can never be stopped because Ethereum is sufficiently decentralized, but things like centralized table coins and traditional domains can be. We need full-stack decentralization. So decentralization isn't just this meme that people won't show up about. It's a constant check on power that needs to be present, even when no

Starting point is 00:26:10 one is attacking it in that moment. 99 days out of 100, you won't need decentralization. But you do need decentralization 100 days out of 100 days, because that's what keeps the doors closed towards people who wish to shut these systems down. So, Bankless Nation, we've reached the part of the frontier where they fight us. This is nation-state authority versus individual autonomy. We've often said this on the show, that crypto isn't about left-versus right. It's about top versus bottom, the state versus the individual.

Starting point is 00:26:38 The nation-staters will argue that we need this rule to protect the public good. North Korea can use tornado cash to finance productions of nuclear missiles, which is an unfortunate thing to have to argue against. But I'll ask you, is it really going to be tornado cash that is the thing that enables North Korea to access nuclear weapons? Is there nothing in the meat space world that can be more effective force against North Korea? And yes, people also use tornado cash for laundering money and evading taxes too. It's obvious why the nation state doesn't like this technology.

Starting point is 00:27:07 But we'll go back to the basic principles that both crypto and the United States of America stand on. Individual freedom and autonomy should be preserved to the maximal degree. And when it comes to a conflict between the state and the individual, the individual should get the priority. Like that's the quintessential use of speech. Like if there's going to be a concept of like code is speech in America, that's it right there. Like, hey, people, I've got a good idea. This thing is really cool. You guys should try it out.

Starting point is 00:27:33 That's it. Like there's no business interest or something. So I don't really know when people are like, ah, there's going to be better, you know, maybe we take the fight in a better time. Yeah, we'll have to pick and choose our battles. But being frank, I think, you know, that's where I think you want to use as much firepower as possible. If we can't have access to basic privacy tools, it is the first step on a long dystopian road of not having access to anything. I'm aware of the slippery slope fallacy behind that statement. But when individual freedoms are given up towards nation-stay control, it's really, really, really hard to get it back.

Starting point is 00:28:05 I want to thank Collins and Jerry for helping me tell the story. And I also want to thank Luke, my editor and second brain at Bankless for testing this show format in production with me. And I also want to thank you, Bankless Nation, for being on the journey with us. As always, ETH is risky, crypto is risky, DFI is risky, tornado cash is now illegal. You can lose what you put in because Circle might freeze it. But we are headed west. We're on the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we are glad you are with us on the Bankless journey.

Starting point is 00:28:33 Thanks a lot.

Bankless - Tornado Cash BANNED By OFAC... Is this the War on Crypto?

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