How the Tornado Cash ruling is a victory for crypto
The following is a guest article from Matthew Niemerg, co-founder of Aleph Zero.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a landmark ruling yesterday that could fundamentally reshape how cryptocurrency protocols are regulated. In Van Loon v. Department of Treasury, the court found that the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) exceeded its authority when it sanctioned Tornado Cash’s immutable smart contracts.
The ruling hinges on a deceptively simple question: can computer code that cannot be modified or controlled be considered “property”? The appellate court’s answer was an emphatic no.
Tornado Cash is a cryptocurrency anonymizing service that helps preserve privacy by pooling users’ digital…
