US takes on bitcoin blender Sinbad

The United States Department of the Treasury sanctioned Sinbada popular cryptocurrency shuffler which would be used by the hackers North Korean Lazarus.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Treasury Department announced Wednesday that it has sanctioned bitcoin mixer Sinbad.

According to the release, Sinbad was used by the North Korean-sponsored hacker group to launder digital assets from major hacks such as Horizon Bridge, Atomic Wallet and Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge, three large-scale attacks attributed to Lazarus.

Sinbad has also been used by other cybercriminals to blend funds linked to illicit activities such as sanctions evasion, drug trafficking or the trade of other prohibited products on the darknet.

The Treasury Department and our partners in the U.S. government are prepared to deploy every tool at our disposal to prevent virtual currency blenders like Sinbad from facilitating illicit activities,” commented Treasury Assistant Secretary Wally Adeyemo.

A crypto-currency mixer or blender allows, as its name suggests, to mix transactions in order to offer greater confidentiality to its users. These tools are used by both legitimate entities and cybercriminals to obscure the provenance of stolen funds.

The US has already sanctioned several services of this type, such as Chipmixer, Blender or Tornado Cash, whose native TORN token has just been delisted from the Binance platform.

Last month, on-chain data expert Elliptic reported that the hackers behind the FTX hack had used Sinbad to launder funds.

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