The post US Lifts Sanctions on Tornado Cash Mixer After Court Ruling appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

The decision followed a January ruling by a U.S. appeals court, which declared the sanctions illegal. According to the January court ruling, “Tornado Cash’s immutable smart contracts (the lines of code that ensure privacy) are not ‘proprietary’ to a foreign national or entity, which is […] an overreach of OFAC’s authority as defined by Congress.” In a statement on March 21, the Treasury Department said the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) removed several dozen Tornado-related smart contract addresses on the Ethereum blockchain network from its sanctions list. Tornado’s native token, Tornado Cash (TORN), rose about 60% following the news, according to data from CoinMarketCap. OFAC is the division of the Treasury Department responsible for administering economic and trade sanctions against nations and foreign nationals. Tornado Cash allows users to combine cryptocurrencies into a mixer and then withdraw them to other wallet addresses, making it difficult to trace the original funding source. Money Laundering Charges In August 2022, OFAC sanctioned Tornado Cash, saying the blockchain protocol helped launder cryptocurrency stolen by North Korean hacker group Lazarus Group. In February, Lazarus was accused of embezzling $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency exchange Bybit in the largest cryptocurrency exploitation in history. In total, Tornado Cash allegedly facilitated the laundering of more than $7 billion in illicit funds since the protocol’s launch in 2019, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. In 2024, a Dutch court found Alexey Pertsev, one of the developers of Tornado Cash, guilty of money laundering and sentenced him to 64 months in prison. In February, Pertsev was released under house arrest while he prepared an appeal against the sentence. The Ethereum Foundation has pledged to donate $1.25 million to Pertsev’s defense. “Privacy is normal and writing code is not a crime,” wrote the foundation on social network X, announcing the donation on Feb. 26. The U.S. decision to remove Tornado Cash from the sanctions…

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Filed under: News - @ March 22, 2025 8:25 pm