Tornado Cash trading volume hits record high…Large transfers from PulseChain-related addresses impact

JH Kim

Summary

Tornado Cash (Tornado Cash)'s trading volume reached an all-time high.
The main cause of the surge was large transfers from addresses related to PulseX (PulseX), a PulseChain (PulseChain)-based exchange.
Richard Heart and the related platforms are under regulatory scrutiny over charges of issuing unregistered securities and embezzlement.

Trading volume on the Ethereum (ETH)-based mixing platform Tornado Cash (Tornado Cash) reached an all-time high.

On the 7th (local time), crypto-focused media DL News reported that the main cause of the surge was addresses related to PulseX (PulseX), the PulseChain (PulseChain)-based exchange managed by Richard Heart (Richard Heart). A total of 21 addresses transferred more than 116,000 ETH to Tornado Cash (Tornado Cash), equivalent to about $400 million at current prices, or roughly one-third of the platform's total value locked (TVL).

The surge appears to be concentrated in the activity of a specific large wallet (a "whale"). Tornado Cash is a privacy protocol that uses enhanced anonymity techniques to hide sender and receiver information, and it has been under scrutiny by regulators in various countries over money-laundering concerns.

Earlier, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged the three platforms under Richard Heart — Hex (Hex), PulseChain (PulseChain), and PulseX (PulseX) — in 2023 with issuing $1 billion worth of unregistered securities, and Heart himself has been sued on allegations of embezzling at least $12 million.