Tornado Cash Twister Ends

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Well, shucks, folks! It seems the whirlwind surrounding Tornado Cash has finally died down. The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has given the dispute between Coin Center and the US Treasury Department the old heave-ho 🚫. And I reckon that’s a mighty fine thing, don’t you? 😊

This decision comes on the heels of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) yanking Tornado Cash off its sanctions list earlier this year. The government claimed that made the whole shebang moot, and I reckon they’re right 🤷‍♂️.

The Tornado Cash Sanctions Get Swept Away

Peter Van Valkenburgh, the big cheese over at Coin Center, is breathing a sigh of relief. He took to social media platform X (formerly Twitter, for all you old-timers) to declare that this marks the end of their legal wrangling over the Tornado Cash sanctions 📣. He also noted that the government didn’t seem too keen on defending its actions, which he called an “overly broad interpretation of sanctions laws” 🤔.

Tornado Cash got itself into a whole heap of trouble back in August 2022 when OFAC slapped sanctions on it for allegedly helping out with some shady money laundering deals 🤑. That meant US folks and companies were forbidden from doing business with the platform, which didn’t sit too well with some crypto advocacy groups, including Coin Center 🤝.

Those groups filed a bunch of lawsuits, challenging the sanctions and giving the government a hard time about its actions 📝. And it seems the appellate court was skeptical about OFAC’s authority in the matter, which might’ve contributed to the Treasury’s decision to withdraw its sanctions 🤑.

Now, Coin Center is saying that this whole thing is almost water under the bridge, but they’re waiting for a separate Texas court ruling to be finalized before they consider the matter fully moot 🤞. Both parties have agreed to wrap up this phase of litigation, so that’s a step in the right direction 👍.

Roman Storm’s Trial Looms Large

But wait, folks! There’s more! Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm is gearing up for a trial that’s set to start in less than two weeks ⏰. He recently chatted with Crypto In America about whether he’ll take the stand in his own defense, and it sounds like he’s still undecided 🤔.

Storm’s team plans to fight allegations that he profited from illicit activities linked to the crypto-mixing service, but he’s not making any promises about testifying 🤐. He was indicted in 2023 on multiple charges, including conspiracy to commit money laundering and operating an unlicensed money transmitter, following the Treasury’s sanctions against Tornado Cash 🚔.

The government claims the platform was used by North Korea’s notorious Lazarus Group to launder a whole bunch of stolen cryptocurrency 💸.

As of now, Tornado Cash’s native token, TORN, is trading at $9.30, which is a mighty impressive 308% surge year-to-date 🚀. That’s similar to XRP‘s performance during the same period, which has seen a 443% price increase 🤑. These two assets are among the top 100 performers in the market, so it seems the storm has indeed passed ⛅️.

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2025-07-08 11:43