A federal appeals court has ruled that the U.S. Treasury Department’s sanctions against the cryptocurrency mixing service Tornado Cash were unlawful, overturning a lower court ruling.

Brazilian lawmaker Eros Biondini has introduced a bill to establish a Bitcoin reserve in the country in a bid to diversify the country’s financial assets and bolster its economic resilience.

Cryptocurrency fund issuer Valour has launched an exchange-traded product (ETP) for the popular meme-inspired cryptocurrency Dogecoin (DOGE) according to an announcement form its parent company DeFi Technologies.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Federal Court Strikes Down Sanctions on Tornado Cash
• Brazilian Lawmaker Proposes Strategic Bitcoin Reserve
• Valour Launches Dogecoin Exchange-Traded Product
• Top-Tier Exchanges Show High Adoption of Third-Party Monitoring

Federal Court Strikes Down Sanctions on Tornado Cash

A federal appeals court has ruled that the U.S. Treasury Department’s sanctions against the cryptocurrency mixing service Tornado Cash were unlawful, overturning a lower court ruling.

The decision marks a victory for privacy proponents and answers a controversial debate on whether the government has the right to go after technology that’s associated with illicit activity.

Tornado Cash, which allows users to obscure the origin of cryptocurrency transactions, has long been a point of contention between privacy advocates and regulators. The Treasury Department argued that the service was used by criminals, including North Korea's Lazarus Group, to launder stolen funds.

However, the appeals court disagreed, ruling that the Treasury Department had “overstepped its congressionally defined authority” by sanctioning the service's underlying smart contracts, which are lines of computer code that operate autonomously.

The court found that these contracts cannot be considered the "property “of a foreign entity and therefore do not fall under the jurisdiction of U.S. sanctions law. Various firms in the cryptocurrency space, including Coinbase, had sued the government arguing it had overreached.

Coinbase’s chief legal officer, Paul Grewal, said the ruling was a “historic win for crypto,” adding that Tornado Cash’s smart contracts “must now be removed from the sanctions list and U.S. persons will once again be allowed to use this privacy-protecting protocol.”

Brazilian Lawmaker Proposes Strategic Bitcoin Reserve

Brazilian lawmaker Eros Biondini has introduced a bill to establish a Bitcoin reserve in the country in a bid to diversify the country’s financial assets and bolster its economic resilience.

The proposal suggests allocating up to 5% of Brazil’s $372 billion international reserves to the “Reserva Estratégica Soberana de Bitcoin (RESBit),” a strategic sovereign Bitcoin reserve, through a phased acquisition strategy.

The bill emphasizes Bitcoin’s potential to safeguard against currency fluctuations and geopolitical risks and cites El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender and the recent approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the U.S. as examples of innovative national strategies leveraging cryptocurrency.

The Brazilian proposal echoes similar initiatives in the United States. Senator Cynthia Lummis’s Bitcoin Act 2024, introduced in July, outlines a framework for the U.S. to hold Bitcoin and empowers states to do the same. More recently, a Pennsylvania lawmaker has also introduced a bill to allow the state treasurer to invest in Bitcoin.

Valour Launches Dogecoin Exchange-Traded Product

Cryptocurrency fund issuer Valour has launched an exchange-traded product (ETP) for the popular meme-inspired cryptocurrency Dogecoin (DOGE) according to an announcement from its parent company DeFi Technologies.

The ETP, to be traded on Sweden's Spotlight Stock Market, grants both retail and institutional investors a regulated route to gain exposure to Dogecoin, the world's largest memecoin by market capitalization.

Valour cites the recent U.S. presidential election and the subsequent surge in Dogecoin demand, fueled by figures like Elon Musk, as a key driver behind the launch. The memecoin sector is notably one of the fastest-growing in the cryptocurrency space this year.

Top-Tier Exchanges Show High Adoption of Third-Party Monitoring

CCData’s latest Exchange Benchmark report assessed 84 exchanges, and found that those graded AA rely on external providers for transaction monitoring and market surveillance, while only 40% of those rated A do.

Out of the exchanges rated BB, only 25% use external providers. These tools focus on anti-money laundering and non-registration risks while helping detect abnormal trading behaviors to prevent market manipulation.

 Dig deeper via CCData’s latest Exchange Benchmark report.

State of the Crypto by Top Tier Exchange Volume

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