The Blockchain Association and the DeFi Education Fund have become the latest industry advocates to file their support of Coin Center’s lawsuit against the United States Treasury over its “unlawful” sanctions aga Tornado Cash.
On June 2, the two cryptocurrency industry advocacy groups filed a joint amicus brief in support of Coin Center, arguing that the U.S. sanctions against the crypto mixer Tornado Cash should be dropped.
1/ Today, my colleagues and I at @BlockchainAssn and our partners at @fund_defi filed an amicus brief in support of @coincenter‘s lawsuit against OFAC fighting against sanctions of the Tornado Cash software protocol.
https://t.co/mSZW7nVDOb pic.twitter.com/Y4CxjJtBrq
— Marisa Tashman Coppel (@MTCoppel) June 2, 2023
They called the sanctions imposed by the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) “both unprecedented and unlawful,” and added:
“OFAC’s sanctions are unlawful. OFAC lacks statutory authority to sanction software like Tornado Cash, and regardless, its decision lacks any factual predicate that could render the sanctions lawful.”
The associations argued Tornado Cash is software and while OFAC has the legal authority to sanction people or property, it cannot sanction a decentralized protocol.
“The…
