BREAKING: US Court Overturns Tornado Cash Sanctions—Florida Case Dismissed in Landmark Crypto Ruling
Privacy tech scores a win as judges side with code over coercion.
The Treasury Department just got schooled—again—on how blockchain doesn’t fit their 20th-century rulebooks. This time, it’s Tornado Cash dodging the regulatory bullet.
Key details:
- Federal appeals court vacates sanctions against Ethereum mixer - Florida lawsuit tossed on jurisdictional grounds - Judges hint at ‘overreach’ by financial cops
Legal experts call it a watershed moment for DeFi autonomy. Meanwhile, SEC lawyers reportedly burned three midnight oil barrels rewriting their enforcement playbook.
The punchline? When your ‘consumer protection’ arguments get outflanked by an anonymizing protocol, maybe—just maybe—it’s time to stop blaming the tools and start fixing the policy. Or keep throwing tantrums. Wall Street’s watching either way.
Mandate ends Coin Center appeal
On Oct. 30, 2023, the district court ruled that Tornado Cash qualified as an “association” whose smart contracts amounted to blocked property under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, granting summary judgment to the Treasury.
Coin Center’s November 2023 notice of appeal set up a circuit split when, on Nov. 26, 2024, the Fifth Circuit in Van Loon v. Treasury reversed a Texas court and declared that Immutable smart-contract code is not property and cannot be sanctioned.
Treasury chose not to petition the Supreme Court after Van Loon. Instead, on Mar. 21, it, stating that newer “targeted tools” would address illicit crypto flows more precisely.
The step erased the factual injury alleged by the Coin Center plaintiffs, leading to both sides filing a joint motion asking the Eleventh Circuit to vacate the district ruling and remand with instructions to dismiss for mootness.
The panel granted that request and issued its mandate, formally closing appellate docket 23-13698.
Limited practical change for the mixer
The Tornado Cash protocol remains operational on-chain, free from centralized control. Its governance token, TORN, trades on decentralized exchanges that have never delisted it.
Delisting and the appeal’s dismissal do not affect the criminal proceedings against Tornado Cash co-founders Roman Storm and Roman Semenov, who face money laundering charges in the Southern District of New York.
Furthermore, it does not resolve whether developers can be held liable for downstream use of autonomous code. These questions will likely reach courts only through future enforcement actions rather than this concluded civil suit.
With the sanctions lifted and the litigation concluded, Tornado Cash returns to the regulatory grey zone that governed it before August 2022, while OFAC continues to signal that it may craft narrower designations for privacy tools that demonstrably serve sanctioned actors.
