US Cracks Down On Crypto Mixers Following Axie Infinity Attack

In response to the $550 million stolen during the Axie Infinity attack in March, the U.S. Treasury Department has sanctioned crypto mixer Blender. On May 5, the Office of Foreign Assets Control updated its ‘Specially Designated Nationals’ list to include Blender’s various website domains as well as a slew of digital currency addresses. Blender is known for being a tool that hackers use to launder money, and it has been linked to several cyber assaults sponsored by the North Korean government. While this may not be the end of crypto mixers, it is certainly a step in the right direction for deterring future cybercrime. It remains to be seen what effect, if any, the U.S. sanctions will have on Blender and other crypto mixing platforms. Blender, for example, is a platform that allows users to mix and match virtual currencies without revealing their transaction history. A crypto mixer usually combines transactions together and sends them out to new addresses, thus allowing someone to deposit coins and withdraw them from a “clean” address, which makes it significantly more difficult to trace their financial transactions on a public blockchain ledger. More crypto mixer crackdown to follow? Mixers are popular among cryptocurrency scammers because they allow users to keep their identities private when using cryptocurrencies. For example, the most frequent Ethereum DeFi hacks result in Tornado Cash, a prominent mixer that employs zero-k...