What Will Happen To The Various Crypto Assets In The Tornado Cash Deposit Contra...

The recent incidents involving the Tornado Cash mixer have put the entire cryptocurrency community on edge. What is even more interesting is how there is still a fair amount of funds locked in the service’s smart contracts. While the USDC is not going anywhere, it remains unclear where the ETH, cDAI, DAI, USDT, and WBTC are headed. 

Who Owns The Tornado Cash Balances?

User @Marcov put together a dashboard for everyone to keep track of the funds currently found within the Tornado Cash smart contracts. As the service was shut down and its coder is currently awaiting trial – for writing open source code not to facilitate illicit behavior but to provide privacy – there are many unanswered questions. One pressing matter is the funds currently locked in Tornado Cash smart contracts and what will happen to those balances. 

There will undoubtedly be a fair few Tornado Cash users who would like to get their balance back without involving third parties, least of all governments or agencies. Whether that will be possible is a different matter. Funds in smart contracts are always interesting, especially when it pertains to deposit contracts. There is no function to call to issue a refund, although the contract creator can still do so manually.

However, that person is currently in jail and unable to process any transactions. It seems unlikely the police will force him to do so, although they most certainly will want to access everything he has, and the crypto balances would be a nice bonus. However, that money belongs to the users and not some overreaching government or agency. Rest assured, something will happen to this money – it is quite the sum – but no one knows what will happen exactly. 

An Assortment Of Currencies

Per the Dune dashboard, there are a few different currencies held in the Tornado Cash deposit contracts. For instance, one balance represents 154 Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) sitting there, representing over $3 million in value. Although it wouldn’t be impossible to see those funds lost forever, that would make a fair few people very unhappy, and for a good reason. 

However, the 178,049 ETH in the deposit contract also need to find their rightful home. Whether those will be returned to the sender is a different matter. A similar sentiment exists toward that DAI balance of over 26 million, further confirming how popular the Tornado Cash service is. Keep in mind these are all transparent assets being used for – primarily – legal purposes, but people want privacy. If this is how badly people want privacy, they should be allowed to have it. Punish those abusing the system, not the ones who create the system. 

Other balances to look out for include nearly 300,000 in USDT, over 1 million cDAI, and 74,900 USDC. That later balance will not matter much, though, as that balance was frozen pretty quickly, and the funds will go absolutely nowhere. Even so, that balance will need to be compensated somehow, yet there is no indication anything like that will happen. 

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