The largest Ethereum miner joins US sanctions

Ethermine, the largest Ethereum miner, no longer creates blocks containing Tornado Cash transactions. This is likely due to sanctions imposed by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

However, Ethermine is located outside the United States and is not subject to OFAC sanctions. However, its users may be Americans. Therefore, if Ethermine mines a block containing a Tornado Cash transaction, it can be interpreted as cooperation with a sanctioned cryptocurrency exchange. As you can see, Ethermine decided not to take any risks.

Takens Theorem cryptanalyst Matthew Greene discovered that Ethermine had stopped processing Tornado Cash transactions and presented a chart. It illustrates that Ethermine has not generated a block containing a Tornado Cash transaction during the time period shown below.

As a reminder, the United States imposed sanctions on Tornado Cash over allegations of laundering stolen cryptocurrencies. The agency banned US citizens and businesses from using the platform’s services. After that, key blockchain infrastructure services Infura and Alchemy joined the list of organizations that block access to the cryptocurrency mixer. However, this did not prevent a huge number of organizations from standing up for the developer of Tornado Cash and organizing a number of rallies and lawsuits.