Tornado Cash’s price rose just under 5% Monday after news circulated on X that a U.S. appeals court had green-lit the end of a lawsuit against the Treasury Department.
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on July 3 that the lawsuit, brought by crypto interest group Coin Center against the Treasury Department and various government officials, could be dismissed following the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s ending of sanctions against the crypto mixer and a separate court ruling blocking OFAC from enforcing these sanctions.
TORN’s price traded at $9.67, up from $9.16 earlier in the day.
Last month, Coin Center and the Treasury Department filed a joint motion asking the appellate court to vacate a Texas district court’s April ruling that the way that OFAC went about designating Tornado Cash was unlawful, and permanently enjoining the agency from enforcing sanctions against it in the future.
OFAC delisted Tornado Cash from its sanctions list in March of this year, after another appeals court — the Fifth Circuit — ruled that it could not sanction smart contracts. And in April, a district court judge also in the Fifth Circuit ruled that OFAC could not sanction Tornado Cash again. After several extensions of the abeyance period, this decision became legally binding on June 28. The government agreed not to appeal the decision.
Coin Center’s Executive Director Peter Van Valkenburgh celebrated the decision on X on Monday, writing: “This is the official end to our court battle over the statutory authority behind the [Tornado Cash] sanctions. The government was not interested in moving forward and defending their dangerously overbroad interpretation of sanctions laws.”
In their June motion, the parties explained that, while they wanted the district court’s ruling vacated for different reasons — Coin Center because the appeal would become moot after the Texas district court’s judgment became final and unappealable in June, and the government because “OFAC’s rescission of the designation moot[ed] this appeal — they agreed that the best course of action would be for the Eleventh Circuit court to vacate the district court’s ruling and remand with instructions to dismiss.
Despite removing Tornado Cash from the sanctions list, the U.S. government continues to pursue criminal money laundering charges against Tornado Cash developers Roman Storm and Roman Semenov. Storm’s trial is slated to begin June 14 in New York.
