The agency said on March 21, the Department of the Treasury of the United States dropped the Tornado Cash cryptocurrency mixer from the list of sanctions.
The removal takes place after the January decision of the American Court of Appeal, in which it was found that the Office of Control of Foreign Treasury Assets (OFAC) cannot sanction smart Tornado agreements because they are not the property of any foreigner.
Pursuant to the judgment of the January Court, “unchanging intelligent Tornado Cash agreements (lines of the Privacy Software Code) are not the” property “of a foreigner or subject, which means […] Ofac crossed his congress -specific authority. “
On March 21 statementThe State Treasury said that Ofac had removed several dozen smart contract addresses in the blockchain ethereum network from the list of sanctions.
Family Tornado token, tornado cash (torn), according to about 60% in messages, according to messages data with coinmarketcap.
The data show that on March 21 Torn has a market capitalization of about USD 73 million and in full -divorced value (FDV) of almost USD 140 million.
Ofac is a treasure office for administering economic and commercial sanctions to countries and foreigners.
Tornado Cash allows users to combine cryptographic deposits to the mixer, and then withdraw them later to various portfolio addresses, which makes it hard to track the original source of financing.
It is torn by about 60% in messages. Source: Coinmarketcap
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Allegations of money laundering
In August 2022, Ofac sanctioned Tornado Cash after he abandoned the blockchain protocol, he helped washing the cryptocurrency stolen by the Lazarus Group, a hacking outfit from North Korea.
The Lazarus group allegedly stolen billions of dollars in cryptography through various cyber attacks.
In February, Lazarus was accused of postponing $ 1.4 billion from the digital asset exchange in the largest cryptography in history.
In total, Tornado Cash allegedly facilitated the washing of over $ 7 billion in illegal funds since the start of the report in 2019, according to the Treasury of the US treasury.
In 2024, the Dutch court stated that 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 from home custody, and he prepared an appeal for his conviction.
The Ethereum Foundation undertook to donate $ 1.25 million to defend Pertsev.
“Privacy is normal and writing a code is not a crime”, EF wrote in post X, announcing the donation on February 26.
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