Twister Money, the “crypto-mixing” protocol, has skilled a resurgence in 2024 after a major decline in exercise following the U.S. authorities’s sanctions two years in the past.
The sanctions, imposed by the Workplace of Overseas Property Management (OFAC) in August 2022, initially led to a drop in month-to-month deposits to Twister Money, with exercise plunging by greater than 90%.
Twister Money Sees $1.9 Billion Deposits in H1 2024
Nonetheless, latest knowledge from blockchain analytics agency Flipside Crypto reveals that the protocol obtained greater than $1.9 billion in deposits in simply the primary half of 2024, a 50% enhance from the overall deposits all through 2023.
Not too long ago, the service has seen heavy inflows from hackers concerned in main exploits. In keeping with Arkham Intelligence, the Poloniex change hacker, who stole over $100 million final yr, transferred $76 million to Twister Money up to now two months.
Equally, the HECO Bridge and Orbit Chain exploiters moved $166 million and $47.7 million to the mixer this yr. It’s because Twister Money’s decentralized nature has made it difficult for U.S. authorities to manage its use successfully.
Designed to uphold privateness, a core precept of the decentralized crypto house, the protocol mixes funds from numerous transactions earlier than redistributing them, thereby obscuring their authentic sources. This emphasis on privateness has, in flip, made Twister Money a horny possibility for people looking for to launder illicit funds.
Resurgence of Mixing Companies
In a latest report, Blockchain analytics agency Chainalysis additionally famous a basic enhance in market exercise and a resurgence of blending providers in 2024.
“When trying on the development of particular person mixing providers total, we see that WasabiWallet, JoinMarket, and Twister Money have grown probably the most,” mentioned the report.
In August 2022, the OFAC sanctioned Twister Money after uncovering that the North Korean hacking group Lazarus had used the protocol to launder roughly $455 million in unlawful funds.
The OFAC sanctions require that anybody participating with Twister Money can be positioned on a “blacklist,” stopping their pockets from being accepted at any legally compliant crypto exchanges.
The sanctions have additionally led to important authorized and regulatory challenges for Twister Money’s co-founders, Alexey Pertsev, Roman Storm, and Roman Semenov. In 2023, Alexey Pertsev was sentenced to 5 years and 4 months in a Dutch jail after being convicted on cash laundering prices.
Roman Storm was arrested on related prices in the US in August and pleaded not responsible. He was launched on a $2 million bond and has since filed a movement to dismiss all prices on March 31. The third co-founder, Roman Semenov, stays at giant.
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