U.C. Berkeley’s Decentralized Finance MOOC
Peter Van Valkenburgh gave a lecture on privacy and surveillance law for U.C. Berkeley’s Decentralized Finance MOOC with a focus on the constitutionality of 6050I reporting and the OFAC sanctions against Tornado...
Politico: Writing the Rules of Crypto
Learn more about this event here.
Does the Merge change how Ethereum is regulated? (No.)
The Ethereum Merge is resurfacing questions about regulatory differences between proof-of-stake and and proof-of-work. As we've said many times, we do not believe that the technological differences between POS and...
How does Tornado Cash actually work?
When a person uses the Tornado Cash contracts to protect their privacy, they arguably are not even engaged in the kinds of activities that can be sanctioned.
Today Coin Center published a detailed factual explanation of how Tornado Cash works. We worked with several world-class Solidity experts who generously donated their time to look directly at the...
Analysis: What is and what is not a sanctionable entity in the Tornado Cash case
By treating autonomous code as a “person” OFAC exceeds its statutory authority.
Last Monday, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) made a designation adding Tornado Cash to the Specially Designated Nationals And Blocked Persons (SDN) List that it administers....
Briefing on OFAC Tornado Cash SDN listing at Zcon3
Peter Van Valkenburgh gave an impromptu briefing on the Tornado Cash sanction
U.S. Treasury sanction of privacy tools places sweeping restrictions on all Americans
Sanctioned Tornado Cash smart contract is a tool, not a person.
Tornado.cash—the website and associated Ethereum addresses—has been added to the OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) SDN list (the list of Specially Designated Nationals with whom Americans and American businesses...
Comments to the Department of Treasury Regarding Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets
This comment describes concretely why digital assets, and cryptocurrencies in particular, are essential to the operation of decentralized systems, and what the actual benefits of decentralization and disintermediation are for...
The Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act is promising with room for improvement
Today Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Stabenow, Ranking Member Boozman, Senator Booker, and Senator Thune introduced the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act of 2022. It seeks to regulate cryptocurrency exchanges as...
The Cryptocurrency Tax Fairness Act has been introduced in the Senate
The Virtual Currency Tax Fairness Act of 2022 was introduced with bipartisan sponsors in the Senate today. This is a companion to a bill with the same name that has...