Tornado Cash (Torn) has just marked a major victory against the American government, passing a blow to overcome cryptographic regulations.
On April 29, 2025, the American district judge Robert Pitman (western Texas district) issued a permanent injunction against the Treasury Bureau for the Control of Foreign Assets (OFAC), the blocking of the reintegration of sanctions on the crypto mixer.
The decision strikes the original designation of August 2022 of OFAC de Tornado Cash as a specially designated national (NTC), which accused the protocol of allowing money laundering – including for the Lazare group in North Korea.
Tornado Cash against the OFAC
The court has dismantled the case of the Treasury on several fronts. The Pitman judge ruled that the intelligent contracts of Tornado Cash are not “property” under American law, which makes them unacceptable to sanctions. This strengthened a previous decision of the fifth circuit which had already weakened the government's position.
OFAC tried to argue that the case was theoretical because it has struck tornado money in March, as cryptocurrency reported. The court did not buy it, however, and Pitman acknowledged the obvious risk that the treasure could simply reimed the sanctions on a later date and lock them up with a permanent injunction.
The complainants (led by Joseph Van Loon and supported by the Coinbase Legal Team) successfully argued that the treatment of the immutable open-source code as a sanctionable property has exceeded the OFAC authority. A month ago, in February, the main developer of Tornado Cash, Alexey Pertsev, was released of the Dutch prison, marking the end of pre -trial detention.
The torn price sees a modest gain after the court's decision
The implications are massive. This decision is not only a victory for Tornado Cash – this is a major precedent for developers DEFI, Web3 and Open -Source. He throws a key into future attempts to regulate the protocols decentralized by brute force and strengthens the legal shield around public code bases.
The market reacted, but cautiously. Torn, the native token of Tornado Cash, displayed a decent gain after the announcement of the news. According to Coingecko data, the confidentiality token is negotiated at $ 7.8, an increase of 6% in the last 24 hours.
Optimism is there, but the wider challenge sector always absorbs the entire scope of what this legal victory means. The message is clear: open source protocols are no longer a just game for lazy regulations.
