GitHub lifts ban on crypto mixer Tornado Cash 

Last month, the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated the popular cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash as an entity on the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) sanction list. This decision prompted a backlash from campaigners for free speech and privacy rights. After that, GitHub, which is controlled by Microsoft, deleted its source code and also closed the user accounts of three people who had contributed code to the project.

A recent change of events resulted in the platform lifting its ban on the currency mixer as well as contributors on the network. Ethereum developer Preston Van Loon tweeted that the hosting service has not yet undone all of its modifications and returned the repositories to their previous state. He also noted that the repositories are currently in “read-only” mode.

.@github has unbanned the @TornadoCash organization and contributors on their platform! https://t.co/ktdghDQKx8 https://t.co/Md17vFE9DZ

— prestonvanloon.eth (@preston_vanloon) September 22, 2022

Loon is of the opinion that this decision represents “progress from an outright ban.”

Treasury Department’s recent guideline on Tornado Cash

Notably, as TheCoinRise reported, the Treasury Department issued a clarification guide earlier this month that states that merely “interacting” with Tornado Cash’s open-source code, subject to certain provisions, would not violate sanctions imposed by the OFAC. This guidance led to Tornado Cash’s return to GitHub. The guideline stated:

“U.S. persons would not be prohibited by U.S. sanctions regulations from copying the open-source code and making it available online for others to view, as well as discussing, teaching about, or including open-source code in written publications.”

In a similar vein, U.S. citizens would not be barred from accessing the Tornado Cash historical website’s Internet archives or, should it reactivate, the Tornado Cash website itself, under U.S. sanctions legislation.

Tornado Cash’s future is still uncertain, but the crackdown did manage to garner a lot of industry support.  Coinbase disclosed that it was paying for a lawsuit that six people of the nation filed against the Department of Treasury.