🌎 Tornado Cash Surges Despite Bearish Crypto Market Trends

Tornado Cash (TORN) has experienced a significant price surge and an increase in DeFi total value locked (TVL) despite the broader crypto market facing bearish conditions.

TORN has risen by 11.8% in the past 24 hours, trading at $3.36 at the time of writing. The asset’s market cap has surpassed the $17 million mark with a daily trading volume of $51,000. Currently, TORN is the 957th-largest cryptocurrency.

This morning, the asset briefly reached an intraday high of $3.39 at around 08:40 UTC. Despite this rally, TORN remains down by 99.23% from its all-time high of $437.41 on February 13, 2021. The Tornado Cash token hit an all-time low of $1.31 on January 10, just five months ago.

Interestingly, the rise in TORN’s price comes at a time when the global crypto market capitalization has recorded a 0.5% decline in the past 24 hours, currently hovering at $2.67 trillion.

According to data provided by Defi Llama, the TVL in the Tornado Cash DeFi protocol increased by 7% over the past day, reaching $614.18 million — a level last seen on May 5, 2022. Wrapped Ethereum (WETH) holds the largest token allocation in the protocol. Additionally, the Tornado Cash DeFi protocol, an Ethereum-based privacy tool, witnessed $41.63 million in USD inflows today.

Tornado Cash’s challenges began in August 2022 when the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned the platform over money laundering allegations. Authorities subsequently arrested its founder, Alexey Pertsev, in the Netherlands shortly after the sanctions were announced.

In a show of support, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin donated 30 ETH to the Juicebox campaign “Free Alexey & Roman” on May 30, demonstrating solidarity with the Tornado Cash developers.