Tornado Cash TVL Spiked by $148 Million in July

Tornado Cash’s total value locked (TVL) spiked in July by over $140 million. The coin mixing platform’s native token, TORN saw an increase in TVL of 49% last month. It began the month with a TVL of about $297.13 million which increased to $445.37 on July 31.

The spike in Tornado Cash’s TVL has been attributed to an increase in the value locked across blockchains where the protocol is deployed. There was an increase in total value locked on Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Gnosis and Optimism over the same time period.

Compared to other coin swap services Quickswap, DefiChain DEX, Benqi, Solend, BiSwap, and Marinade Finance, Tornado Cash performed exceedingly well with its $148.24 million increase in TVL. TORN was trading at $20.73 on July 1 and ended the month at $25.09. This represents an increase of 21%. The token had also experienced a low of $19.56 and a high of $28.38.

Launched in 2019, Tornado Cash has been in the news lately due to sanctions imposed by the US Treasury Department. According to the department, crypto valued at over $7 billion has been mixed using the platform. Of this amount, $1.5 billon worth of crypto has been directly linked to criminal activity. This includes the $445 million heist by the hacking group The Lazarous Group in 2019, over $96 million from the June 2022 Harmony Bridge Heist and more than $7.8 million from the recent, August 2 Nomad Heist.

Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian E. Nelson said:

“Today, Treasury is sanctioning Tornado Cash, a virtual currency mixer that launders the proceeds of cybercrimes, including those committed against victims in the United States. Despite public assurances otherwise, Tornado Cash has repeatedly failed to impose effective controls designed to stop it from laundering funds for malicious cyber actors on a regular basis and without basic measures to address its risks. Treasury will continue to aggressively pursue actions against mixers that launder virtual currency for criminals and those who assist them.”

Some of the Tornado Cash resources banned were the Tornado Cash GitHub account, the personal GitHub accounts of Tornado Cash contributors and all USDC on Tornado Cash CirlePay contracts.

Following the sanctions, a 29 Tornado Cash developer was arrested in Amsterdam by the Dutch Crime Agency. The arrest sparked outrage in the online crypto community with people left wondering what “justification” there was for the arrest.