The United States Department of the Treasury is facing a second judicial challenge after its August decision to prohibit Tornado Cash, a service for mixing cryptocurrencies that conceals the origins of coin transactions.
Wednesday, October 13, a lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida alleging that the Treasury’s penalties violate its authority and target cryptocurrency investors in the United States.
The 78th United States secretary of the treasury, Janet Yellen, was named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by Coin Center, a crypto advocacy organization, and a group of users that relied on Tornado Cash for recurring privacy issues.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control of the United States Treasury charged Tornado Cash with money laundering in August.
Since its inception in 2019, the Office of Foreign Assets Control said that Tornado had laundered almost $7 billion worth of cryptocurrencies. This amount includes virtual currency that was taken by a North Korean-funded hacking group.
In addition, the regulatory body authorized cryptocurrency wallets associated with Tornado Cash, as well as a related code referred to as smart contracts.
There are genuine reasons for users to utilize privacy-enhancing technology such as Tornado Cash, according to the complaint. As a consequence of OFAC’s sanctions against privacy mixers, which function by combining funds to conceal the sender of a specific transaction, these people have effectively disclosed their entire transaction history to anybody examining network data.
OFAC Director Andrea Gacki, Patrick O’Sullivan, a software developer from Florida, David Hoffman, an investor from New York, and an unidentified supporter of Ukraine are also plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
Finbold revealed in September that cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) is supporting a lawsuit brought by customers of the Ethereum (ETH) mixing service Tornado Cash against the United States Treasury Department.
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