# Van Loon v. Department of the Treasury **Fifth Circuit, No. 23-50669, decided 26 November 2024.** Panel: Jones, Willett, Engelhardt. Opinion by Judge Don R. Willett. Reversed and remanded. Six plaintiffs, including Coinbase employees and with [[Coinbase]] funding the suit, challenged OFAC's August 2022 designation of [[Tornado Cash]] under the Administrative Procedure Act. Filed 8 September 2022 in the Western District of Texas; the district court granted summary judgment to Treasury; the Fifth Circuit reversed. ## The holding > The immutable smart contracts at issue in this appeal are not property because they are not capable of being owned. IEEPA reaches "property" in which a foreign entity has an "interest." The court read "property" to require something *capable of being owned*, and found that immutable smart contracts — which cannot be altered, removed, or controlled by anyone, including their authors — fail that test. OFAC therefore exceeded its statutory authority. The court **expressly declined** to reach the two other questions everyone wanted answered: whether Tornado Cash is an "entity," and whether it holds an "interest" in the contracts. It also did not reach the First Amendment. The win was statutory and narrow. ## Why it matters beyond crypto It is the first appellate holding that a category of software is outside the reach of the sanctions power because it is **ownerless** — not because it is speech. That reasoning is what makes [[Tornado Cash]] filable as a work rather than an entity; see [[Software Hub]]. ## Aftermath - **18–21 March 2025** — OFAC noticed intent and then delisted Tornado Cash, while retaining the North Korea designation against [[Roman Semenov]]. - **April 2025** — on remand the district court vacated the designation and permanently enjoined re-enforcement; judgment became binding 28 June 2025 with the government agreeing not to appeal. - **3 July 2025** — the parallel *Coin Center v. Yellen* appeal ended in the Eleventh Circuit, vacated and remanded with instructions to dismiss as moot. > [!note] Note on the deference framing > Several law-firm alerts headline this as a post-*Loper Bright* refusal of agency deference. The opinion itself turns on statutory text. See [[Loper Bright v. Raimondo]] for the deference doctrine, but do not attribute this holding to it. ## Related - [[Tornado Cash]] · [[Software Hub]] · [[Department of the Treasury]] · [[Money Laundering]] · [[Coinbase]]