TORN Soars Over 500% as Court Overturns Tornado Cash Sanctions

TL;DR

• TORN is up over 500% in the last 24 hours following a favorable court ruling.

• A U.S. federal appeals court threw away the sanctions earlier placed by the U.S. Treasury Department on Tornado Cash.

TORN Rallies as Tornado Cash Scores a Huge Victory

TORN, the native token of the Tornado Cash ecosystem, is one of the best performers in the market in the last 24 hours. The token rallied by over 500% on Tuesday, hitting the $40.4 mark before retracing below $20.

At press time, TORN is trading at $19.36, up 446% in the last 24 hours. The positive performance came after a U.S. Federal Appeals court threw out sanctions earlier placed on Tornado Cash, a service that anonymizes crypto transactions.

In its ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit said,

"Tornado Cash’s immutable smart contracts (the lines of privacy-enabling software code) are not the 'property' of a foreign national or entity. Tornado Cash can't be blocked under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)overstepped its congressionally defined authority."

 OFAC sanctioned Tornado Cash last year, claiming that the platform was a vital tool used by bad actors, including North Korea's Lazarus Grou,p to launder cryptocurrencies stolen from platforms and games such as Axie Infinity. The court ruling added that,

"We readily recognize the real-world downsides of certain uncontrollable technology falling outside of OFAC’s sanctioning authority. But we must uphold the statutory bargain struck (or mis-struck) by Congress, not tinker with it."

While TORN soars, Bitcoin has been underperforming. BTC has lost 2% of its value in the last 24 hours and now trades at $92,687 per coin.