The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has dismissed Coin Center’s legal appeal against the US Treasury Department. The appeal challenged the 2022 sanctions imposed on Ethereum-based mixer Tornado Cash by the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
The dismissal came after both parties filed a joint motion to vacate the lower court’s ruling. The court accepted that the matter was now ‘moot.’ This followed OFAC’s decision in March 2025 to remove Tornado Cash from the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list.
Peter Van Valkenburgh, Executive Director of Coin Center, confirmed the case’s end in a post on X (formerly Twitter). He said the court battle was officially over. He also claimed the government chose not to defend its ‘dangerously overbroad interpretation’ of sanctions laws.
Valkenburgh also talked about crypto optimism for 2025. The Executive Director went on to explain the future Coin Center priorities and strategies in the following X post:
Tornado Cash’s native token (TORN) initially surged over 5% following news of the dismissal. It later declined to $9.67. The price has stabilized at $9.51 at the time of writing. The token has experienced high volatility in 2025, driven by regulatory actions and developer trials.
The following chart shows TORN price hike of 2.19% as of 2 PM, reflecting cautious optimism among investors:
OFAC initially sanctioned Tornado Cash in August 2022. The action targeted several Ethereum wallet addresses linked to the protocol. US authorities said North Korea’s Lazarus Group used the service to launder billions of dollars.
Coin Center was not the only group to challenge the move. Six Tornado Cash users, backed by Coinbase, also filed a lawsuit. That case led to a repeal of the sanctions in January 2025 by the US District Court for the Western District of Texas.
Despite the court dismissal, Tornado Cash developers remain in legal jeopardy. Co-founder Roman Storm is set to face trial later this month in a New York federal court.
Storm faces charges of money laundering, conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business, and violating US sanctions. A conviction could lead to a lengthy prison sentence. Legal experts are unsure whether the recent court outcome will impact his defense strategy.
Alexey Pertsev, another Tornado Cash co-founder, was convicted in the Netherlands in 2024 on money laundering charges. He received a 64-month prison sentence and was released under supervised monitoring earlier this year.
Roman Semenov, the third co-founder, remains at large. He is still being pursued by US authorities and was named in the same indictment as Storm.
The Tornado Cash saga has sparked intense debate in the crypto industry. US courts have started to differentiate between immutable smart contracts and property. Legal experts say this distinction could limit how decentralized tools are treated under sanctions law.
Privacy advocates argue that penalizing developers for writing open-source code sets a dangerous precedent. The case against OFAC is over. However, the criminal trial of Roman Storm could shape future rules for crypto privacy tools and open-source developers in the United States.
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