The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has made a decision to end an appeal made by crypto advocacy group Coin Center regarding the Ethereum-based mixing service Tornado Cash. This decision comes after the U.S. Treasury Department removed Tornado Cash from its OFAC Sanctions list, which it had been on for over three years.
Coin Center’s challenge to OFAC’s decision to include Tornado Cash on its sanctions list has officially come to a close with the dismissal of this case. Peter Van Valkenburgh, executive director at Coin Center, mentioned that the government did not want to continue defending an interpretation of sanctions laws that seemed too broad.
The dismissal of this appeal follows a memo from U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, stating that the Department of Justice will no longer target crypto technology like mixers.
Despite the appeal being dropped and Tornado Cash no longer being on the sanctions list, the developers of the technology are still facing criminal charges. Roman Storm, co-founder and developer of Tornado Cash, is set to appear in federal court in the Southern District of New York to face money laundering and sanctions violations charges. Storm has maintained that he did not profit from illicit transactions made through Tornado Cash.
In a motion to dismiss the charges, Storm’s lawyers argued that Tornado Cash did not meet the definition of a money transmitter under the Bank Secrecy Act because the technology does not take control of user funds. However, the court denied the motion, stating that the BSA’s scope does not require the technology to take control of user funds.
Another Tornado Cash co-founder, Alexey Pertsev, was found guilty of money laundering in The Netherlands and sentenced to five years in prison. The third co-founder, Roman Semenov, has been wanted by the FBI since August 2023 and is facing the same charges as Storm.
The legal battle surrounding Tornado Cash continues, with the developers facing ongoing challenges and legal proceedings despite the appeal coming to an end.