On July 3, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit agreed to terminate the appeal made by Crypto Advocacy Group Coin Center to OFAC regarding the Ethereum-based mixing service Tornado Cash.
The court’s decision comes about two months after the US Treasury removed tornado cash from its OFAC sanctions list after it was listed for more than three years.
The firing of the case officially concludes the challenging OFAC decision to include tornado cash on the Coincenter sanctions list.
Coin Center Executive Director Peter Van Valkenburgh commented on X today that the government doesn’t want to continue defending interpretations of sanctions laws that it appears to be too broad.
The appeal, inspired by a memo from U.S. Associate Attorney General Todd Blanche, said the U.S. Department of Justice would no longer target cryptographic technologies like mixers.
Tornado cash developers are still on trial
Despite the fact that the appeal has been dropped and the tornado cash is no longer on the OFAC sanctions list, the technology creators are still facing criminal charges.
Roman Storm, co-founder and developer of Tornado Cash, is scheduled to appear in federal court in the Southern District of New York on Monday, July 14th, 2025.
Storm is currently facing money laundering and sanctions violation claims, but he has confirmed that he has not made any profit from illegal transactions made through the tornado cash service.
In September this year, Storm’s lawyers filed an motion to dismiss the charges, saying Tornado Cash did not meet the definition of a money transfer machine under the Bank Secrets Act (BSA). However, the court denied the motion, saying that the scope of the BSA does not require the technology to control user funds.
Alexey Pertsev, another co-founder of Tornado Cash, was found guilty in the Netherlands in May 2024 and sentenced to five years in prison.
Roman Semenov, co-founder of the third Tornado Cash, has been appointed to the FBI since August 2023 and is hoping for the FBI. The US Department of Justice plans to acquire Smenov on the same charges as Storm.
