Tornado Cash is safe from US sanctions, says court

Crypto mixer Tornado Cash can no longer be relisted on the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions list following a Texas court ruling on Monday.

The Treasury added Tornado Cash to the list in 2022 and claimed it helped launder $7 billion worth of funds from the likes of North Korea’s Lazarus group. Then, after years of court proceedings, it was removed from the list last month.

It was then argued by the Treasury that the case was “moot” and didn’t require further ruling, opening up the possibility of Tornado Cash being relisted.

However, yesterday the US District Court for the Western District of Texas rejected the Treasury’s argument, and said that it may have sought to “‘reenact precisely the same [designation]’ in the future.”

After the 5th Cir. ruled against the government in November, it repeatedly tried to avoid entry of a final judgment in the Tornado Cash case. It asked the Court TWICE for long delays before claiming the case was moot (with no final judgment needed) b/c they had chosen to remove… pic.twitter.com/pSDsnWawo8
— paulgrewal.eth (@iampaulgrewal) April 28, 2025

Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer called the Treasury’s arguments “nonsense.”

Judge Robert Pitman said, “Rather than acknowledge that the Fifth Circuit’s order required delisting Tornado Cash, Defendants state that they exercised their ‘discretion’ in deciding to do so based on more general policy and legal considerations.”

As part of the ruling, he updated amendments that left the Treasury “permanently enjoined” from enforcing the sanction and deeming its previous enforcement “unlawful.”

Got a tip? Send us an email securely via Protos Leaks. For more informed news, follow us on X, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.