OFAC 'overstepped' on Tornado Cash sanctions, court orders reversal
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to remove addresses linked to Tornado Cash from its list of Specially Designated National and Blocked Persons (SDN). The controversial crypto mixing service was banned by OFAC in August 2022, following its widespread use by hackers, including North Korea’s Lazarus Group, to launder stolen crypto. District Court officially ordered to reverse sanctions against Tornado Cash pic.twitter.com/gmWRbphU15 — L0la L33tz (@L0laL33tz) January 22, 2025 Read more: Treasury cited only three examples of illicit Tornado Cash use, says judge Tornado Cash allows users to deposit fixed amounts of tokens into shared privacy pools, before using a cryptographic proof of their deposit to withdraw to a new, untraceable address. Confirming arguments widely held across the crypto and open-source community, the court stated that “Tornado Cash’s immutable smart contracts (the l...