Bureaucrats Flummoxed: Crypto Mixer Tornado Cash Slips From Treasury’s Steel Grasp!

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Picture it: a courtroom somewhere in Texas, the air thick with the perfume of bureaucratic confusion and the faintest whiff of ambition. A federal judge—his desk more paper-cluttered than a Moscow publisher’s after a writer’s strike—stares down the Department of the Treasury and delivers a ruling that makes both crypto freaks and privacy fanatics rub their hands in glee.

With a swing of his gavel, Judge Robert Pitman informed the Treasury: “Hands off Tornado Cash, comrades!” Effectively, the department now finds itself banned from slapping the same “naughty list” sanctions on the infamous crypto mixer. Previously, the OFAC accused Tornado Cash of enabling $7 billion in “creative” money movement (including enough from North Korea’s Lazarus Group to make even the most jaded Bond villain nod in respect).

You see, in January 2025, after months of drama and raised crypto eyebrows, the court reversed the sanctions faster than a bureaucrat can say “inter-departmental memo.” OFAC itself pretended to tidy up the mess by quietly removing Tornado Cash and nearly a hundred Ethereum addresses from its blacklist. “This case is moot!” they proclaimed, hoping the judge hadn’t noticed the awkward attempt to sweep things under the judicial rug.

Legal eagles like Coinbase’s Paul Grewal were unimpressed. “But how do we know you won’t put Tornado Cash right back on the list the minute we turn our backs?” asked Grewal, perhaps picturing Treasury staffers lurking in the shadows with updated sanction paperwork and a ballpoint pen.

The court dryly noted that this matter is “capable of repetition while evading review” — lawyer code for “don’t gaslight us, we’ve seen this trick before.” The Treasury, adopting the tone of a cat explaining the broken vase wasn’t their fault, insisted the removal happened thanks to “policy considerations.” The judge, on the other hand, issued a verdict so explicit even a Ministry of Magic bureaucrat would blush: “This designation is unlawful and permanently enjoined. Go bother someone else.”

Defendants do not suggest they will not sanction Tornado Cash, and they may seek to “reenact precisely the same designation” in the future. In other words, never say never (especially not under oath). The court, meanwhile, recommends less discretion and more following the Fifth Circuit’s orders—preferably without interpretive dance.

The crypto crowd celebrated, yet the battle isn’t over. The Treasury continues to mutter about “national security” and “future regulations.” Judge Pitman, meanwhile, basically says: “Not my circus, not my monkeys. I’m just here to do what the Fifth Circuit tells me.”

Meanwhile, Tornado Cash’s creators face their own Kafkaesque sagas: Roman Storm, bracing for a courtroom summer hotter than a Moscow samovar, and Alexey Pertsev sharpening his appeals for the Dutch judiciary—a land famous for water, windmills, and evidently, crypto prosecutions.

Elsewhere, the DeFi Education Fund, fed up with the ongoing legal operetta, sent a pointed letter to “Crypto Czar” David Sacks, urging the White House to stop treating open-source developers like 19th-century forgers. “Criminalizing code is a fast track to technological irrelevance,” they claim, perhaps imagining Trump declaring America “the crypto capital of the planet” while standing atop a pile of discarded regulatory paperwork.

Tornado Cash wriggles out of another legal snare, bureaucrats lick their wounds, developers sweat in various courtrooms, and the ballet of law, crypto, and sarcasm twirls on. 🕺💻💸

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2025-04-30 16:44