TORN token exchange rate rose to the highest since November after the court decision to lift sanctions against Tornado Cash

Earlier, the Court of Appeal ruled that the Treasury Department exceeded its authority by applying economic restrictions to the protocol

22.01.2025 - 13:55

3 min

What’s new? The US District Court for the Western District of Texas has ruled to overturn the decision to impose sanctions on crypto mixer Tornado Cash and send the case for retrial. Against this backdrop, the TORN native token rate jumped 170% overnight to reach $25,48, the highest since November 27, 2024.

Material by The Block

What else is known? The previous price peak in November was also associated with a favorable court ruling in the Tornado Cash case. At that time, the US Federal Court of Appeals ruled that the Treasury Department had exceeded its authority by sanctioning unchangeable smart contracts deployed by the mixer’s developers.

According to the decision, these contracts are not the property of a foreign person or entity, and therefore cannot be subject to economic restrictions.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) within the Treasury Department added Tornado Cash to the sanctions list in August 2022, citing that the mixer is being used by DPRK hackers to launder stolen cryptocurrencies.

Its developer Alexey Pertsev was sentenced in the Netherlands to more than five years in prison on charges of laundering $1,2 billion. The proceedings against the project’s founders Roman Storm and Roman Semenov are ongoing in the United States.

After the sanctions were imposed, Tornado Cash user Joseph Van Loon and five other plaintiffs sued the Treasury Department and its head Janet Yellen, as well as OFAC and OFAC Director Andrea Gacki for abuse of authority. The plaintiffs argued that Tornado Cash should not be sanctioned because it is software, not a person or entity, and the court sided with them.

10X Research: Tornado Cash court ruling creates more clarity for Ethereum developers

A US court ruled that sanctions against crypto mixer smart contracts are illegitimate because no one can control them

The US authorities relied on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose sanctions, but the court ruled that the protocol did not fall within the definition of property specified in the document.

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