Coin Center filed a lawsuit against the US Treasury and the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) over the sanctions imposed on virtual currency mixer Tornado Cash.
Coin Center is a think tank focused on the “public policy issues facing cryptocurrency and decentralized computing technologies.”According to a statement released Wednesday, the lawsuit was filed to “keep privacy normal, to delist Tornado Cash privacy tools from sanctions, and to enjoin Treasury from enforcing against ordinary Americans exercising their self-evident and basic rights to privacy.”
Additionally, the filing claims that the Treasury has overstepped its authority. It also accuses the department of failing to realize the consequences of its actions on many Americans that have their funds frozen.
Jerry Brito, executive director of Coin Center, said that they are prepared to take this to the Supreme Court if necessary. “Not only are we fighting for privacy rights, but if this precedent is allowed to stand, OFAC could add entire protocols like Bitcoin or Ethereum to the sanctions list in future, thus immediately banning them without any public process whatsoever. This can’t go unchallenged,” he wrote.
The suit was joined by three co-plaintiffs: Patrick O’Sullivan, a software developer, David Hoffman, host of Bankless, and an anonymous operator who used Tornado Cash to gather funds to purchase equipment for Ukrainian soldiers.
Gabriel Shapiro, Web3 legal expert, supported the lawsuit and claimed it “hits every argument I thought should be made and is a much needed pushback to prevailing themes of D.C.-based insanity.”
