Demirors Claims: Crypto Is Not Immune to ‘Financial Censorship’

• Meltem Demirors, claimed that crypto is not immune to “financial censorship”. 
• At the time of writing, 32.25% of post-merge Ethereum Blocks are OFAC Compliant.
• Demirors warns the public about the difficulty faced in building crypto.

The Chief Strategy Officer of CoinShares Meltem Demirors claimed on Twitter that crypto is not immune to “financial censorship”. 

At the time of writing, 32.25% of post-merge Ethereum Blocks are OFAC Compliant. The OFAC-compliant blocks can censor transactions associated with specific contracts and addresses on a state-sponsored list.

Demirors warned the public that one must recognize trying to build permissionless, distributed systems such as crypto are censorship resistant in a political environment that optimizes for coercion and control is hard.

Moreover, in the Twitter thread, Demirors talked about PayPal’s attempt to censor users but explained that “financial censorship” has been the reality for marginalized communities such as sex workers, political organizations, niche subcultures, and many more.

Furthermore, Demirors claimed that companies such as GitHub and PayPal that engage in censorship have the right to deny service and access to anyone they choose, at any time, without explanation of whether the Terms of Service are stated or not.

While concluding the Twitter thread, Demirors commented:

Tornado Cash isn’t the first and won’t be the last. There are way too many vectors that can be exploited to exert soft and hard power against most protocols / dApps / companies.

In the Mev Watch website, Labrys has stated that ensuring that Ethereum remains credibly neutral on the global stage is important. All persons and entities operating validators outside of the U.S. should consider running non-censoring relays for the benefit of the network.