9th February 2025 > > Tornado Cash & Maryland.

tl;dr

Removing sanctions from Tornado Cash, and freeing Alexey Pertsev, shows us once again the direction of travel. The State of Maryland starts its process of adopting BTC as a treasury reserve, taking the number of states travelling this path up to eighteen.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, helps us to put a little perspective on things:

“If you think of Coinbase like a bank, we now hold about $0.42T in assets for our customers, which would make us 21st largest bank in the US by total assets, and growing. If you think of us more like a brokerage, we'd be the 8th largest brokerage today by AUM.”

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Tornado Cash

Another plank of Operation Choke Point 2.0 is being dismantled.

Tornado Cash is a crypto mixer. The idea behind mixers is that funds deposited into them are mixed to such a degree that the source of funds paid out from the mixer cannot be determined. Like all technology, it can be used for legitimate purposes and for illegitimate purposes.

OFAC (US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets) sanctioned Tornado Cash, in a first of its kind, copying Gensler’s and the SEC’s regulation by enforcement philosophy. Back In November 2024, OFAC was found to have exceeded its authority by the US Fifth Circuit Appeals Court:

On 21st January this year the US District Court for the Western District of Texas overturned the sanctions, a judgement that may get appealed, but that seems unlikely given the crypto-friendly pivot underway in the US.

In a further signal of the direction of travel, Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev, previously found guilty of money-laundering because of suspected use of Tornado Cash by the feral scumbags who work for Kim Jong-Un, has been released from prison ahead of his appeal against his conviction. I suspect that being released in advance suggests his appeal has a strong probability of being successful.

Everywhere you look, the barriers to wholesale crypto adoption are being dismantled one by one.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Maryland

The state of Maryland is now poised to debate a bill creating a strategic BTC reserve:

https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Legislation/Details/HB1389?ys=2025RS

Imaginatively titled “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Act of Maryland” its aim is clear:

“Establishing the Maryland Bitcoin Reserve Fund to serve as a reserve asset for the State through the investment of Bitcoin; and authorizing the State Treasurer to invest the funds obtained by the State through the enforcement of certain gambling violations in Bitcoin.”

So, that’s eighteen states now.

Pleasingly the sponsor of the bill is Democratic State Delegate Caylin Young. We have seen in the UK that the traditional political divide between the pro-crypto advocates and the naysayers looks like it might be upended, which would be a tremendous result and a huge boon to the UK economy, a promise upon which the current government was elected.

Smashing this political divide in the US would give a big boost to the crypto revolution.