Crypto mixer Tornado Cash just flipped the script on the Treasury—and privacy coins are reaping the rewards.
Tornado Cash’s native token, TORN, soared to highs of almost $35 Tuesday morning, after the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court ruled that immutable smart contracts cannot be classified as “property” under existing law.
At time of publication, TORN has pulled back from its local high to trade at $17.17—up 382.9% on the day, per CoinGecko data.
The court's landmark decision struck a blow to the U.S. Treasury Department’s sanctions authority, triggering a market-wide rally in privacy-focused cryptos. Railgun (RAIL) surged 36.6% to $0.98, Zcash (ZEC) climbed 26.5% to $56.92, Beam (BEAM) increased 19.8% to $0.069, and DASH jumped by 11.4% to $35.79, according to CoinGecko data.
The ruling overturned a lower court’s decision, stating that Tornado Cash’s immutable smart contracts—autonomous lines of code that execute without human intervention—are not “property” and thus fall outside the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
It also emphasized that immutable smart contracts cannot be owned or controlled, making them exempt from property-based sanctions.
This directly challenges the Treasury’s August 2022 designation of Tornado Cash, which alleged the protocol facilitated over $7 billion in illicit transactions, including funds tied to North Korea’s Lazarus Group.
The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court ruled Tuesday that the Treasury overstepped by sanctioning Tornado Cash’s immutable smart contracts, stating the autonomous software cannot be classified as property.
The Fifth Circuit held that when smart contracts are immutable—meaning no entity can modify or control them—they cannot be classified as "property" subject to sanctions under existing law.
The decision reverses a lower court ruling and marks a significant win for privacy advocates and blockchain develop...
"Privacy wins."
Crypto leaders have hailed the ruling as a pivotal moment for the space, with Peter Van Valkenburgh, director of research at advocacy group Coin Center, praising the legal clarity provided by the decision. “Immutable smart contracts are not property of any kind and therefore can’t be sanctioned,” Van Valkenburgh wrote on Twitter.
The ruling’s impact was amplified on social media, where crypto leaders celebrated the court’s acknowledgment of decentralized technology.
Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal tweeted that, “Privacy wins," adding that, the verdict was an “historic win for crypto and all who care about defending liberty.”
Privacy wins. Today the Fifth Circuit held that @USTreasury’s sanctions against Tornado Cash smart contracts are unlawful. This is a historic win for crypto and all who cares about defending liberty. @coinbase is proud to have helped lead this important challenge. 1/6
Uniswap Labs CEO Hayden Adam tweeted, “Immutable smart contracts just beat the Treasury Department in court. Incredible to see the degree to which crypto is killing it in federal courts.”
For now, privacy coins are enjoying their moment in the spotlight—an indicator of how closely the crypto market ties itself to legal and regulatory outcomes.
Daily Debrief Newsletter
Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
Two of the biggest crypto-linked stocks set records on Wednesday, with Coinbase hitting a an all-time high price and both Coinbase and Strategy setting new highs for closing market cap.
The stock milestones came amid a surge in crypto prices, with Bitcoin setting multiple all-time highs in recent days, while other major coins like Ethereum and XRP are up more than 20% each over the past week.
Coinbase, the prominent American crypto exchange, hit a record of $405.88 on Wednesday afternoon, per Ya...
Don’t look now or you might jinx it, but it seems as if “alt szn” may at last be upon us—with the biggest altcoin of them all, Ethereum, for once making ETH bulls laugh and bears cry.
Ethereum is up nearly 10% today and a whopping 26% over the past seven days, currently trading above $3,300. This makes it the best performing token among the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization in the last 24 hours. It’s also the best ETH has looked in the last six months.
Crypto veterans will remembe...
Publicly traded consumer products firm Upexi made a strategic decision to create a digital assets treasury in April, raising $100 million to buy Solana, promptly sending its share price skyrocketing.
Now months later, the firm is raising another $200 million in part to acquire more SOL, the native token of the layer-1 network its Chief Strategy Officer Brian Rudick told Decrypt is the “end-game winning, high performance blockchain.”
“Solana is one of the first second-generation high-performance...