Last month, the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the US Department of Treasury.
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The narrative
In November 2024, a panel of the Court of Appeals of the Fifth Circuit ruled that the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the Treasury Department could not sanction intelligent contracts linked to Crity Mixer Tornado Cash. Last month, Ofac eliminated Tornado’s cash completely, although he left developer Roman like in his list of specially designated nationals.
Why does it matter
If Tornado’s cash could be sanctioned to begin with, it has been a dispute point for the cryptographic industry. The fifth circuit ruling caused a demonstration in the price of token torn and increased the hopes that it was more difficult for the United States government to block the legal uses of mixers.
Break down
The exclusion of Tornado Cash included directions of intelligent contracts and other components of the general mixer, and followed the November decision. The elimination may have been an effort to avoid a judicial ruling that would force Ofac to permanently eliminate tornado cash.
Going back a bit: a group of developers sued ofac after Tornado Cash was sanctioned for the first time with the support of Crypto Exchange Coinbase. That case, van Loon v. Treasury, received an initial decision from an District Court Judge that was favorable to the Treasury Department. In the appeal, however, the fifth circuit ruled, something limited, that intelligent contracts were beyond the reach of the jurisdiction of ofac. The panel of the Court of Appeals threw the case into the district court to resolve the next steps.
On March 21, the same day that he eliminated Tornado’s cash from his sanctions list, ofac presented a notice telling the court that the removal meant that the legal resources of the case case “the matter is now debatable.”
Peter Van Valkenburgh, executive director of Coin Center, said that November’s decision left from ofac with few options.
“They could have waited for the court to invalidate the sanctions or could have eliminated them themselves, and removed themselves,” he said. “You can read those two ways. You can read that as’ I want to try to preserve some ability to fight in the future or [make] Some other listing ‘,’ [and] That is really difficult because that opinion of the fifth circuit is really bad for them. “
The other reading for elimination is Ofac, I just wanted the matter to be resolved quickly, he said.
Leah Moushey, a lawyer from Miller and Chevalier, said the court can choose to reject the presentation of ACA because there is an open question about whether Tornado Cash can be networksign in the future. He pointed out a case of the Supreme Court with thematic similarities.
The court said in that case, the FBI v. Fikre, that the United States government had not shown sufficiently that simply eliminating an individual from an air exclusion list meant that it would never be placed on the list.
Ofac may have to show in this case that Tornado Cash cannot be designated again.
Another open question for Tornado Cash is whether the elimination has any relationship with the criminal case of the United States Department of Justice against developer Roman Storm. After the fifth circuit ruling, Storm’s lawyers presented a motion asking the judge to supervise the criminal case to dismiss the accusation, but the judge has already ruled that the case should advance.
“The judge determined that the scope of the conduct was beyond the interactions with the smart contract,” said Moushey. The fifth circuit failure did not discuss tornado cash as an entity.
Van Valkenburgh pointed out that Ofac left his sanctions against Senov in his place, and the Department of Justice will continue to argue that Storm conspired to violate the sanctions.
The case of the storm is scheduled for trial in July.
Wednesday
- 14:00 UTC (10:00 am et) The Financial Services Committee of the House of Representatives maintained a marked on the stable law, the Financial Technology Protection Law and the State Law of CBDC Anti-Surveilance, which finally approved the three bills, after a one-day session that addresses some 40 different proposed amendments.
Thursday
- 14:00 UTC (10:00 am et) The Senate Banking Committee voted to advance in the nominations of the president of the Securities and Securities Commission, Paul Atkins and Comptroller Jonathan Gould.
- (404 media) T-Mobile offers a GPS tracker for parents to watch their children. Last week, 404 media reports, some parents discovered that they could not track their own children, but received the location data for other children.
- (The New York Times) The Times reported a Ponzi scheme that used cryptography promises a large number of people in an Argentine city. These types of scams are very common.
- (The Atlantic) The Trump administration said in a presentation of the court that had sent an individual with a protected legal status to a field of prisoners of El Salvador without holding a hearing through an “administrative error.” A federal judge ordered the administration to bring him back to the United States on Friday. The White House Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, replied with a statement saying that “we are not aware that the judge has jurisdiction or authority over the country of El Salvador.”
- (The Wall Street Journal) The New Jersey Democrat, Cory Booker, broke the United States Senate record for the longest floor speech after giving a 25 -hour marathon speech in protest of President Donald Trump’s policies.
- (The New York Times) Donald Trump announced a whole set of tariffs on countries around the world, saying that they were reciprocal against tariffs imposed by the United States commercial partners. “The markets are going to boom,” Trump said in comments.
- (Yahoo! Finance) The markets “racked Friday”, after an equally difficult Thursday.
- (Cabling) Among the countries and places, the Heard and McDonald Islands are found in the United States, which is uninhabited by humans and does not export goods.
- (ABC News) The White House said that its tariff rate against individual countries was half of the tariff rates of those countries against US economists. UU. They say that real calculations were divided by the commercial deficit of a country for its import value, then divided by half, ABC News reported.
- (Reuters) The other effect of renewed rates seems to be the chances of recession by increasing, according to a JP Morgan note shared by Reuters.
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Look, next week!
