Shapeshift CEO and founder Erik Voorhees really helpful the MakerDAO group take precautionary measures after the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Twister Money.
Particularly, Voorhees suggested MakerDAO customers to take away their USDC collateral and convert the funds into one other stablecoin. However he stopped wanting advocating a extra censorship-resistant selection.
Pricey @MakerDAO $DAI group… you need to begin unwinding your USDC collateral instantly, changing it into stables which might be extra censorship resistant.
You will have a while to do it, however it is advisable to get began.
— Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees) August 8, 2022
On August 8, the U.S. Treasury issued a press launch stating crypto mixer Twister Money was sanctioned as a consequence of its function in laundering illicit crypto funds price over $7 billion since 2019. Beneath Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Monetary Intelligence, Brian E. Nelson stated:
“Regardless of public assurances in any other case, Twister Money has repeatedly did not impose efficient controls designed to cease it from laundering funds for malicious cyber actors frequently and with out primary measures to deal with its dangers.”
The incident has given rise to dialogue on governmental overreach and alternate options to centralized stablecoins.
The top of Twister Money
The Twister Money web site is offline, its builders have been booted from GitHub, and Circle has blacklisted USDC addresses owned by the group following the sanctions.
A number of months prior, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire dismissed claims that the corporate might freeze USDC accounts for no matter purpose as FUD. He additional countered by implying that entities working inside the legislation don’t have anything to concern.
Coin Heart issued an announcement on the matter, saying sanctions towards a device, moderately than an individual or entity with company, is a blow for individuals who want to preserve their privateness, “together with for in any other case solely authorized and private causes.”
“It seems, as a substitute, to be the sanctioning of a device that’s impartial in character and that may be put to good or unhealthy makes use of like every other expertise.”
The purpose has been extensively supported by members of the crypto group, who view the sanctions as an assault towards private sovereignty.
Huge Brother is watching
The founding father of Bankless, Ryan Adams, chimed in by calling the actions of the U.S. Treasury “the opening shot of massive brother’s assault on crypto.”
In a later tweet, Adams additionally posed the query, the place will this finish? Suggesting Uniswap could possibly be subsequent, then Ethereum — additional insinuating a tiptoe to totalitarianism.
“If software program isn’t secure, then speech isn’t.”
In response to USDC censorship, a researcher at NEAR Protocol DeFi platform Proximity, @resdegen, proposed the event of a brand new decentralized stablecoin free from governmental directives.
Resdegen considers Reflexer’s Rai and Liquidity’s LUSD 100% decentralized, however each are collateralized, which is disadvantageous scalability-wise. Resdegen steered creating a brand new mission which might be algorithmically pegged utilizing BTC or ETH derivatives contracts.
6/ There are some actually decentralized options equivalent to $RAI or $LUSD as their collateral is simply $ETH
I extremely suggest studying about them (Vitalik is a giant supporter of RAI)
Nevertheless, being collateralized stablecoins implies that their scalability will depend on ETH market cap
— Res ®️ (@resdegen) August 8, 2022