Tornado Cash sanctions led GitHub to delete repos; court took 2.5 years to rule them unlawful
adamamcbride · x · 2026-09-14
- A quoted post recounts the Tornado Cash case: on Aug 8, 2022, the US Treasury sanctioned Tornado Cash — not a company or person, but immutable smart contracts on Ethereum, i.e. code itself.
- GitHub deleted the repos and suspended developer accounts within days; two days later a co-founder was arrested in the Netherlands.
- A federal appeals court only ruled the sanctions unlawful two and a half years later, while criminal proceedings continue. The poster warns about how open source code can be silenced.
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