US Government Backs Down in Tornado Cash Lawsuit

The U.S. government has backed away from its lawsuit against crypto mixer Tornado Cash after both the Department of the Treasury, crypto advocacy group Coin Center, and others, all agreed to have the suit declared moot, effective June 28, 2025, court documents show. Lawsuits are considered moot when there is no longer a need to litigate the issue at hand. The Treasury had already removed economic sanctions against Tornado Cash in March. Mixers such as Tornado Cash anonymize transactions by scrambling the paths between senders and receivers of cryptocurrencies. The controversy around them arises when they are used for nefarious purposes, as was the case when North Korea’s “Lazarus Group” used Tornado Cash to launder more than $455 million in stolen funds in 2022. “This is the official end to our court battle over the statutory authority behind the TC [Tornado Cash] sanctions,” wrote Coin Centre Executive Director Peter Van Valkenburgh in a Monday post on X. “The government was not interested in moving forward and defending their dangerously overbroad interpretation of sanctions laws.”