REGULATION | Popular Cryptocurrency Mixer, Tornado Cash, Removed from U.S. Sanctions List Following Court Ruling

The U.S. Treasury Department has officially removed cryptocurrency mixer, Tornado Cash, from its sanctions list, the agency announced on March 21 2025.

The decision follows a January ruling by a U.S. appeals court, which found that the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) had overstepped its authority by sanctioning Tornado Cash’s smart contracts. The court determined that these contracts do not constitute the “property” of any foreign national or entity, making them ineligible for sanctions under existing laws.

According to the ruling:

“Tornado Cash’s immutable smart contracts (the lines of privacy-enabling software code) are not the ‘property’ of a foreign national or entity, meaning […] OFAC overstepped its congressionally defined authority.”

In response, the Treasury Department confirmed on March 21 2025 that OFAC had removed several Ethereum-based smart contract addresses linked to Tornado Cash from its blacklist.

Following the announcement, Tornado Cash’s native token, TORN, surged by approximately 60%, according to data from CoinMarketCap. As of March 21, TORN’s market capitalization stands at approximately $73 million, with a fully diluted valuation nearing $140 million.

OFAC, a division of the Treasury Department, is responsible for enforcing economic and trade sanctions against foreign states and individuals. The court ruling and subsequent removal of Tornado Cash from the sanctions list mark a significant legal and regulatory development in the crypto industry.

A cryptocurrency mixer is a service offered to mix potentially identifiable or ‘tainted’ cryptocurrency funds with others so as to obscure the trail back to the fund’s original source.

The mixing is usually done by pooling together source funds from multiple inputs for a large and random period of time, and then spitting them back out to destination addresses. Since all the funds are lumped together and then distributed at random times, it is very difficult to trace exact coins.

Also, the transaction amounts can be chosen at random so that the transaction is made up of many small partial payments spread over a longer period of time.