Despite all the intelligence at their disposal, human beings retain a pretty strong tendency of making mistakes. The same has already been proven quite a few times throughout our history, with each testimony practically forcing to look for some sort of a defensive cover. We will, fortunately enough, find the best possible answer for our conundrum once we bring dedicated regulatory bodies into the fold. Having a well-defined authority across each and every area was a game-changer, as it instantly concealed a lot of our errors, and therefore gave us a shot at all those possibilities that we could have never imagined otherwise. However, this whole utopia will drop dead before we are even able to realize the stated possibilities, and if we are being honest, it was very much technology’s fault. You see, the moment technology got its layered nature to take over the scene, it provided people with an unprecedented chance to fulfil their ulterior motives at the expense of others. In case that wasn’t enough, the exploitation ended up materializing on such a massive scale that it expectantly overwhelmed our governing forces and sent them back to the drawing board. Now, while the regulators’ contingent finally seems ready to make a comeback, it must navigate through a few challenges first, and a lawsuit against the Treasury department does a lot to give us an insight into such challenges.
A group of Tornado Cash users has formally filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Treasury in relation to the latter’s decision of banning the popular decentralized cryptocurrency service. According to certain reports, the lawsuit, which is funded by Coinbase, claims that ban goes beyond the government’s authority, as it violates the users’ free speech and property rights under the U.S. Constitution and “threatens the ability of law-abiding Americans to engage freely and privately in financial transactions.” Talk about the ban a little bit, it came after the Treasury Department found that Tornado Cash was used by North Korean hackers and other bad actors to launder more than $7 billion worth of digital currency in the past three years. However, Coinbase has countered it by stating that the mixing service was also being used for legitimate privacy reasons. As an example, the company referred to how one of its senior security risk analysts, out of fear that his address would be targeted by Russian hacking groups, had used the service for anonymzing donations to Ukraine.
“Sanctioning open source software is like permanently shutting down a highway because robbers used it to flee a crime scene,” said Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong. “It’s not the best way to solve a problem. It ends up punishing people who did nothing wrong and results in people having less privacy and security.”
Apart from unconstitutional nature of the ban, the plaintiffs, who filed the lawsuit, go on to focus on the financial harm caused by it. They bring up the fact that many people still have their money locked on Tornado Cash, so removing the service’s smart contracts from U.S. sanctions’ list will be the fairest way to move forward.