On March 24, according to CoinDesk, Coinbase's Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal strongly criticized the U.S. Treasury Department for removing the cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions list to circumvent the court's previous final ruling. Grewal warned that without a judicial decision, the Treasury Department could still potentially restart sanctions against Tornado Cash at any time.

In 2022, the U.S. Treasury Department listed Tornado Cash and over 100 associated Ethereum addresses on the "Specially Designated Nationals List" (SDN) on the grounds of "assisting the North Korean hacker group Lazarus in laundering $445 million". On March 21, the Treasury Department removed Tornado Cash from the SDN list and claimed that this action had resolved the dispute without needing a final court ruling. According to U.S. Supreme Court precedent, if the defendant Treasury Department claims the case is meaningless due to "voluntarily stopping the contested action", it must prove that the action is "reasonably not expected to recur". Grewal pointed out, "The Treasury Department has not promised to never re-sanction Tornado Cash, which does not meet legal requirements. By technically lifting the sanctions to avoid an unfavorable ruling from the appellate court, they have left a backdoor for future repeated sanctions. This is not an operation allowed by law, and they know it. If this case is dismissed due to the Treasury Department's self-correction, it will create a dangerous precedent where regulatory agencies can arbitrarily impose and then withdraw sanctions to avoid judicial accountability, leaving crypto projects in a state of uncertainty of potential shutdown at any time."

Coinbase stated that it will continue to push for a final ruling by the district court to prevent Tornado Cash from being sanctioned again. The outcome of this case will define the legal status of smart contracts and the boundaries of regulatory sanctioning powers. The essence of the Tornado Cash case is a collision between the crypto principle of "code is law" and "institutional discretionary power". As a decentralized protocol, Tornado Cash's developers have long since relinquished control, yet the Treasury Department still imposed sanctions under the name of an "entity", triggering disputes over First Amendment freedom of speech and Fifth Amendment due process.