Following the arrest of the Zamora Wallet developers, several other Bitcoin coin mining operations are seeing the writing on the wall and leaving the US for more crypto-friendly regions.
In April, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York charged Zamora Wallet founders Keon Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill with operating a “cryptocurrency racket” that involved more than $2 billion in illegal transactions and facilitated more than $100 million. Navigating transactions with illegal dark web marketplaces.
After the shutdown of Zamora Wallet, the developers of Wasabi Wallet ZKSnacks announced that it has already shut down its mixing service, preventing US customers from using the services.
A Wasabi Wallet representative told Decrypt that “Wasabi's website and API will not be immediately operational from the US.”ZkSNACKs is discontinuing the CoinJoin service for all users at the end of May.
Image: An ad that US customers see on the Wasabi Wallet website.
Hardware wallet Trezor followed suit on May 2, announcing that its mixer service was also on the way.
We deeply respect the privacy of our users, and it is with great regret that we must announce the discontinuation of the Coinjoin feature for Trezor Suite. [June 1] Recently, Trezor tweeted that our partner no longer offers this service.
As the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) leads other regulatory and law enforcement agencies on the warpath against cryptocurrencies, American citizens are increasingly shut out.
The SEC has developed a long history of what many critics, including regulators at the agency, have called “executive regulation.” The US Department of Justice has indicted several crypto developers for money laundering.
Coin mixing or “coinjoin” is a service that allows users to hide the origin and destination of a transaction. Users send cryptocurrency to the service, mixed with others, before reaching the recipient's address, hiding the connection between sender and receiver.
In the year In February 2023, it was revealed that Sinbad Bitcoin Mixer was a rebrand of Blender Bitcoin Mixer, which had previously been shut down by federal regulators. In November, Sinbad was taken offline as the website was seized by law enforcement.
Perhaps the best-known mixer, Tornado Cash, was shut down in August 2022 after the US Treasury Department added the Ethereum mixer service to a specially designated list of citizens, blocking US citizens from using the tool or trading with its addresses.
A representative for Trezor and Zamora Wallet from Decrypt did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.
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