For the past three years, the official US stance on cryptocurrency mixers has been clear: they are tools for money laundering. However, a 32-page report submitted to Congress on March 5, 2024, fundamentally changes this perception.
The report, titled "Innovative Technologies to Combat Illicit Financing of Digital Assets," explicitly lists legitimate reasons for ordinary users to use mixing services for the first time: protecting personal privacy on transparent public chains, concealing payment records for businesses to avoid commercial competition, anonymously donating to charities, and masking daily spending habits in the context of increasingly popular crypto payments.
This shift in position is significant. Previously, the US Treasury Department regarded mixers as purely illegal financial infrastructure in 2022 and 2023. Tornado Cash was sanctioned as a result, and related developers were prosecuted, with a strict and singular regulatory tone. This report does not continue this path—it neither suggests direct restrictions on non-custodial mixers nor promotes the controversial record-keeping proposal of 2023, which privacy advocates believed would make it impossible for decentralized protocols to operate legally. The silence of regulators is sometimes more meaningful than statements.
However, it should be noted that acknowledging legitimate uses does not mean a complete green light. The report also points out that between 2024 and 2025, North Korean state actors stole as much as $2.8 billion through crypto theft, and mixing services played a key money-laundering role in this. This data is positioned as a national security threat, not ordinary financial crime.
To this end, the Treasury Department has proposed a "hold law" that allows financial institutions to freeze suspicious digital assets without legal liability during investigations. This mechanism fills a critical gap in law enforcement: before a court order is issued, institutions cannot prevent the rapid transfer of funds, which North Korean hackers exploit to complete asset transfers.
This policy shift is the result of a confluence of forces: court rejections of broad sanction theories, legal and public backlash from developer lawsuits, and the rapid growth of institutional-grade crypto applications, making it difficult to sustain a "one-size-fits-all" opposition to privacy protection before Congress.
It is worth emphasizing that this adjustment is not a regulatory retreat, but a move towards refined governance. While acknowledging the value of privacy, the Treasury Department precisely targets threat actors, quantifies the scale of losses, and proposes new law enforcement tools. This marks a new stage in US crypto regulation, moving from "wholesale denial" to "precision control."