Co-founder Roman Storm still faces separate criminal proceedings; prosecutors restricted his witness list despite the sanctions outcome.
The U.S. government formally withdrew its appeal in the Coin Center lawsuit, ensuring Tornado Cash cannot face renewed sanctions. This decision concludes multi-year litigation concerning sanctions imposed on the cryptocurrency mixing service.
Coin Center initiated legal action against the U.S. Treasury Department in 2022. The Treasury had sanctioned Tornado Cash, alleging facilitation of illicit transactions by North Korean actors. These sanctions were lifted in November 2024.
Today’s withdrawal permanently blocks similar sanctions under existing statutes. Peter Van Valkenburgh of Coin Center confirmed the development via social media, noting the government declined to defend its prior legal interpretation.
Tornado Cash’s associated token, TORN, increased approximately 4% following the announcement. This price movement occurred despite lingering uncertainties about the platform’s future. Co-founder Roman Storm currently faces separate criminal charges by the U.S. Department of Justice. His trial preparations continue, with prosecutors restricting certain witness testimony.
Tornado Cash remains technically operational as decentralized software. However, its capacity to regain previous adoption levels remains uncertain. The resolution prevents renewed Treasury sanctions but doesn’t affect Storm’s pending criminal case.
The most significant news driving current sentiment comes from a series of major legal developments. According to ETHNews, the U.S. government has officially dropped its appeal in the Tornado Cash case, effectively ending the prolonged lawsuit between Coin Center and the U.S. Treasury over the platform’s privacy functionalities.
This has been interpreted by the crypto community as a victory for decentralized privacy protocols and has contributed to renewed bullish momentum for TORN. While the token price is still 97.8% below its all-time high of $436, the legal resolution marks a critical turning point in the protocol’s regulatory narrative.
TORN remains a governance token for one of the most important non-custodial privacy solutions in DeFi, built using zk-SNARK zero-knowledge proofs. The platform allows for unlinkable ETH and ERC-20 withdrawals, which has made it a focal point of the privacy vs. regulation debate since 2022.
The recent legal outcome may reopen developer interest and push further community governance initiatives, especially now that the threat of imminent regulatory action has softened.
Tornado Cash still holds over $468 million in total value locked (TVL) across its anonymization pools, underscoring the protocol’s ongoing relevance in on-chain privacy use cases. The renewed attention has driven trading activity primarily on HTX (formerly Huobi), which accounts for over 86% of 24-hour TORN volume. Other exchanges such as MEXC, Uniswap, and CoinEx also show healthy liquidity.
