Crypto Privacy is back – for some

Bear markets come and go. The crypto winter that began last year will eventually turn to spring. With that in mind, the collapse of Terra, Three Arrows, and FTX may not end up being the most significant 2022 developments to leave a lasting impact on the industry.

Depending on how things play out, that “honor” could instead go to a double-whammy from early August: the placement of the Tornado Cash protocol and dozens of affiliated wallets on a U.S. government list of sanctioned entities, and the arrest a couple days later of Alexey Pertsev, a developer living in the Netherlands who had contributed to Tornado Cash.

Tornado Cash is a crypto protocol whose smart contracts will function as long as Ethereum exists – you can never really kill it, exactly. Nevertheless, Tornado Cash deposits are a quarter of what they once were, given the legal risk to any US citizen who uses it. Enter Privacy Pools, the spiritual successor to Tornado Cash, open for business to anyone in the United States. We’re breaking it all down in this episode.