Crypto mixer Tornado Cash flipped the script on Treasury — and privacy coins are reaping the rewards.
Tornado Cash's native token rose to nearly $35 on Tuesday morning, after the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that it is not convertible. Smart contracts According to the current law, it cannot be classified as “property”.
At the time of publication, TORN has bounced back from its local high to trade at $17.17 – up 382.9% on the day, according to CoinGecko.
The court's landmark ruling dealt a major blow to the US Treasury Department's sanctions authority, sparking a market-wide rally in privacy-focused cryptos. Railgun (RAIL) is up 36.6% to $0.98, Zcash (ZEC) is up 26.5% to $56.92, Beam (BEAM) is up 19.8% to $0.069, and DASH is up 11.4% to $35.79, according to CoinGecko data.
The ruling overturned a lower court ruling that Tornado Cash's immutable smart contracts — lines of code that execute without human intervention — are not “property.”
He emphasized that immutable smart contracts cannot be owned or controlled, making them exempt from asset-based sanctions.
This directly opposes the Treasury's Tornado Cash designation in August 2022, which found that the protocol facilitated more than $7 billion in illegal transactions, including funds linked to North Korea's Lazarus group.
“Privacy wins.”
Crypto leaders hailed the decision as an important moment for the space, Peter van Valkenburgh, director of research at the advocacy group Coin Center, praised the legal clarity provided by the decision. “Immutable smart contracts are not property of any kind and therefore cannot be sanctioned,” Van Valkenburg wrote on Twitter.
The ruling's impact was amplified on social media, where crypto leaders celebrated the court's recognition of decentralized technology.
Coinbase's chief legal officer, Paul Grewal, tweeted that “privacy will prevail,” adding that the ruling is “a historic victory for crypto and everyone who cares about protecting freedom.”
Uniswap Labs CEO Hayden Adam tweeted, “Immutable smart contracts win over Treasury Department in court. It's amazing to see how much crypto is killing it in the federal courts.
For now, privacy coins are enjoying the spotlight — an indication of how closely the crypto market is entwined with legal and regulatory ramifications.
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