The US Treasury Department says there isn’t any want for a last court docket judgment in a lawsuit over its sanctioning of Tornado Cash after dropping the crypto mixer from the sanctions record.

In August 2022, Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Tornado Cash after alleging the protocol helped launder crypto stolen by North Korean hacking crew the Lazarus Group, resulting in quite a lot of Tornado Cash customers submitting a lawsuit towards the regulator. 

After a court docket ruling in favor of Tornado Cash, the US Treasury dropped the mixer from its sanctions list on March 21, together with a number of dozen Tornado-affiliated good contract addresses from the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) record, and has now argued “this matter is now moot.”

“Because this court, like all federal courts, has a continuing obligation to satisfy itself that it possesses Article III jurisdiction over the case, briefing on mootness is warranted,” the US Treasury stated. 

However, Coinbase chief authorized officer Paul Grewal stated the Treasury’s hope to have the case declared moot earlier than an official judgment might be made isn’t the proper authorized course of.

“After grudgingly delisting TC, they now claim they’ve mooted any need for a final court judgment. But that’s not the law, and they know it,” he stated.

“Under the voluntary cessation exception, a defendant’s decision to end a challenged practice moots a case only if the defendant can show that the practice cannot ‘reasonably be expected to recur.’”

Grewal pointed to a 2024 Supreme Court ruling that discovered a authorized criticism from Yonas Fikre, a US citizen who was placed on the No Fly List, will not be moot by taking him off the record as a result of the ban might be reinstated once more at a later date.

“Here, Treasury has likewise removed the Tornado Cash entities from the SDN, but has provided no assurance that it will not re-list Tornado Cash again. That’s not good enough, and will make this clear to the district court,” Grewal stated.

Six Tornado Cash customers led by Ethereum core developer Preston Van Loon, with the help of Coinbase, sued the Treasury in September 2022 to reverse the sanctions underneath the argument that they had been illegal.

Crypto coverage advocacy group Coin Center adopted via with a similar suit in October 2022.

In August 2023, a Texas federal court docket choose sided with the US Treasury, ruling that Tornado Cash was an entity which may be designated per OFAC laws. On attraction, a three-judge panel ruled in November that Treasury’s sanctions towards the crypto mixer’s immutable good contracts had been illegal.

US Treasury had a 60-day window to problem the choice, which it did; nonetheless, the US court docket sided with Tornado Cash, overturning the sanctions on Jan. 21 and forcing the federal government company to take away the sanctions by March.

Related: US Treasury under Trump could take a different approach to Tornado Cash

Its founders are nonetheless dealing with authorized strife, nonetheless. The US charged Roman Storm and fellow co-founder Roman Semenov in August 2023, accusing them of serving to launder over $1 billion in crypto via Tornado Cash. 

Semenov remains to be at massive and on the FBI’s most wanted record. Storm is free on a $2 million bond and anticipated to face trial in April. 

Meanwhile, Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev was launched from jail after a Dutch court suspended his “pretrial detention” as he ready to attraction his cash laundering conviction.

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