By Michael Scott
Earlier, Snowden spoke about the Tornado Cash saga’s gravity. On January 23, Edward Snowden, a whistleblower turned global fugitive, supported and endorsed the Tornado Cash founder’s legal defence fund.
In an X (formerly Twitter) post, the exiled ex-CIA contractor requested followers for support to aid Roman Storm, the co-founder of a famous but currently banned cryptocurrency mixing service.
On X (formerly Twitter), Storm noted he would unveil a campaign in a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) form to collect funds for an attorney. In 2023, the United States Department of Justice apprehended Storm and charged him with money laundering due to his role in establishing Tornado Cash.
OFAC Bans Tornado Cash Alleging Facilitating Laundering Illicit Funds
Tornado Cash, a famous cryptocurrency coin mixing app, permitted people to secretly send and receive Ethereum, the second biggest digital asset by market capitalization. However, in 2022, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) barred U.S. citizens from utilizing the service.
According to the regulator, criminals had utilized it to launder dirty funds. Afterwards, they claimed that Storm and his colleague Roman Semenov laundered more than $1B in criminal proceeds. Alex Pertsev, a developer, was also arrested.
According to the new fundraiser’s website, Alex Pertsev’s and Roman Storm’s arrests are a straight attack on the open-source development space. They might have significant impacts on code writers and publishers.’ In a retweet of Storm’s request, Snowden said that one should help if they can. He also said that privacy is not a wrongdoing.
Snowden Labels Ban on Tornado Cash Authoritarian and Reactionary
Snowden has resided in Russia since the United States government charged him with espionage in 2013. For a long time, he has supported cryptocurrency and privacy.
In a lengthy discussion with Dan Roberts some months ago, Snowden gave his perspective regarding the Ethereum merge, Ethereum’s and Bitcoin’s privacy challenges, and his stance on DAOs’ utilization in sourcing tips for whistleblowers. In 2023, he claimed Tornado Cash’s sanctioning was ‘profoundly reactionary and authoritarian.’
Snowden played a role in creating Zcash, a privacy coin, and discussed how individuals must utilize cryptocurrencies instead of purchasing them as an investment. He also mentioned Bitcoin’s privacy issue by using the term ‘pseudonymous’ to refer to the most prominent cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
Snowden indicates that the term refers to a situation where the user’s identity is not recorded, but each transaction is. As such, authorities can monitor those who send and receive the digital coin.
Snowden reflection on the privacy issues coincides with a period when Binance shows the likelihood of delisting the privacy-preserving tokens.
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