{"id":138629,"date":"2023-09-02T03:24:17","date_gmt":"2023-09-01T21:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/?p=138629"},"modified":"2023-09-02T03:24:17","modified_gmt":"2023-09-01T21:54:17","slug":"tornado-cash-lawsuit-judge-sides-with-us-treasury-in-motions-for-summary-judgement-crypto-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/tornado-cash-lawsuit-judge-sides-with-us-treasury-in-motions-for-summary-judgement-crypto-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Tornado Cash lawsuit judge sides with US Treasury in motions for summary judgement – Crypto News"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A federal judge in Texas has sided with the United States Department of the Treasury by granting a motion for summary judgment in a lawsuit concerning Tornado Cash brought by six individuals backed by crypto exchange Coinbase.<\/p>\n

In an Aug. 17 filing in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Judge Robert Pitman denied<\/a> a motion filed in April from plaintiffs Joseph Van Loon, Tyler Almeida, Alexander Fisher, Preston Van Loon, Kevin Vitale, and Nate Welch requesting partial summary judgment in a case over controversial mixer Tornado Cash. Pitman, however, granted a similar motion filed by the U.S. Treasury Department.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis case is about Tornado Cash\u2014but the parties disagree on how to characterize Tornado Cash,\u201d said Pitman. \u201cPlaintiffs argue that [Treasury\u2019s Office of Foreign Assets Control]\u2019s designation of Tornado Cash exceeds the Department\u2019s statutory authority over foreign nationals\u2019 interests in property and violates the Free Speech Clause […] The government, on the other hand, argues that Tornado Cash is an entity that may be designated and that it has a property interest in the smart contracts.\u201d<\/p>\n

In August 2022, the U.S. Treasury Department\u2019s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) added Tornado Cash<\/a> to its Specially Designated Nationals list. Many crypto users criticized the move as an overreach of authority. The six aforementioned individuals, with the support of Coinbase, filed a lawsuit<\/a> against the government department in September 2022, seeking to reverse the designation.\u00a0Crypto advocacy group Coin Center followed with its own suit<\/a> in October.<\/p>\n

Related: <\/em><\/strong>Coinbase futures approval seen as a major win amid the war on crypto<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Judge Pitman largely dismissed the plaintiffs\u2019 arguments, ruling that Tornado Cash was \u201can entity that may be designated per OFAC regulations\u201d and its addition to a list of sanctioned entities did not exceed Treasury\u2019s statutory powers and was \u201cnot plainly inconsistent with its regulations\u201d. The ruling claimed developers could analyze and teach the code behind the mixer, but not \u201cexecute it and use it to conduct cryptocurrency transactions\u201d.<\/p>\n

Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal reacted to the judge\u2019s decision on X, saying the exchange intended to support an appeal to the Fifth Circuit:<\/p>\n

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Rights are rarely secured on a path that is always \u2b06\ufe0f and \u27a1\ufe0f. We continue to believe Plaintiffs’ challenge to OFAC’s Tornado Cash action is right. We\u2019ve always known that Fifth Circuit review is required to resolve these issues, and we continue to support them on appeal. 1\/4 pic.twitter.com\/Tz8FkFCSf2<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 paulgrewal.eth (@iampaulgrewal) August 17, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Coinbase is currently embroiled in a civil case with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed in June. Though the OFAC and SEC cases are significantly different, Grewal has made similar arguments<\/a>\u00a0in both lawsuits, claiming in the latter the commission\u2019s enforcement action against the crypto exchange represented an overreach in its authority granted by Congress.<\/p>\n

Magazine: <\/em><\/strong>Tornado Cash 2.0: The race to build safe and legal coin mixers<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A federal judge in Texas has sided with the United States Department of the Treasury by granting a motion for summary judgment in a lawsuit concerning Tornado Cash brought by six individuals backed by crypto exchange Coinbase. In an Aug. 17 filing in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Judge Robert Pitman […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138630,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[235,203,210,234,231,232,237,238,236,233],"class_list":["post-138629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blockchain","tag-bitcoin","tag-crypto-currency","tag-elon-musk","tag-ethereum","tag-hyperledger","tag-ibm","tag-mining","tag-nodes","tag-spacex","tag-tesla"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138629"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148013,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138629\/revisions\/148013"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}