Landmark Ruling: U.S. Court Sides with Coin Center in Tornado Cash Case – Privacy Wins
In a decisive victory for crypto advocates, a U.S. court just shut down the legal battle against Tornado Cash—handing Coin Center a regulatory scalp.
Privacy tech triumphs (for now)
The ruling torpedoes attempts to criminalize code, affirming that privacy isn’t a crime—even if it gives Wall Street compliance officers night sweats. Developers can breathe easier; the precedent slams the door on guilt-by-association attacks against neutral tools.
Finance traditionalists, meanwhile, are clutching their pearls—nothing scares them more than transactions they can’t surveil. Guess due process still applies… unless you’re a DeFi protocol.
Treasury retreats from sanctions defense
Coin Center, a nonprofit focused on cryptocurrency policy, had taken legal action after the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Tornado Cash in August 2022. The sanctions prohibited U.S. citizens and businesses from interacting with the protocol, sparking criticism that the move was an overreach of regulatory power.
In a post on X, Coin Center Executive Director Peter Van Valkenburgh welcomed the dismissal. “This is the official end to our court battle over the statutory authority behind the TC sanctions,” he wrote. “The government was not interested in moving forward and defending their dangerously overbroad interpretation of sanctions laws.”
Sanctions quietly lifted in March
Earlier this year, the Treasury Department quietly reversed course and lifted its sanctions against Tornado Cash in March 2025. This decision came after mounting legal pressure and a ruling from a federal appeals court that suggested the agency had acted beyond its legal limits in enforcing the ban.
The case had become a flashpoint in the broader debate over how U.S. authorities approach decentralized technologies and financial privacy. Critics warned that sanctioning open-source protocols could set a dangerous precedent, effectively criminalizing code.
With the case now dismissed, crypto advocates view the outcome as a victory for digital rights and the protection of permissionless software development in the U.S.
