Tornado Cash TVL Reaches Historic High Near $1.2 Billion

Tornado Cash deposits hit $1.195 billion, linked to Richard Heart's funds.

The total volume of deposits in the cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash has reached a record $1.195 billion. DL News attributed the surge in TVL of the protocol to an influx of funds linked to Richard Heart.

“It seems several large whales are dumping everything into Tornado Cash,” commented MetaMask security researcher Taylor Monahan to the publication.

According to her analysis of on-chain data, over the past few days, more than 20 wallets linked to the PulseX exchange have transferred over 116,000 ETH to the mixer. At current prices, this amounts to approximately $399.5 million, or about a third of Tornado Cash’s TVL.

According to the SEC, Heart (whose real name is Richard James Schueler) controls PulseX, the PulseChain blockchain on which the platform operates, and the HEX project. In 2023, the regulator accused the entrepreneur of raising over $1 billion through unregistered cryptocurrency offerings via these structures.

In March 2025, a court found part of the SEC’s arguments against Heart unproven. Later, the agency decided not to file a new lawsuit.

The entrepreneur may have indirectly confirmed the large asset transfers discovered by experts with a post published on November 5 on the social network X.

wallet watchers be like pic.twitter.com/H0nTvZHE5l

— Richard Heart (@RichardHeartWin) November 5, 2025

“Wallet watchers be like,” he captioned the image.

What is the status of Tornado Cash’s legal cases?

In August 2022, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on Tornado Cash. According to authorities, since the service’s inception, over $7 billion has been laundered through it by criminals. Notably, the protocol was used by hackers from the North Korean group Lazarus.

All company assets, user funds, and source code were blocked, and U.S. residents and citizens were prohibited from using the service.

On January 21, 2025, a U.S. appellate court overturned the sanctions due to “exceeding authority” by OFAC and sent the case to a district court in Texas for further proceedings. In April, a federal court prohibited the Office from renewing or imposing new restrictions on the crypto mixer.

On May 14, 2024, a Dutch court found Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev guilty of laundering $1.2 billion through the mixer and sentenced him to 64 months in prison. From that moment, the developer was in custody. In July, he was denied bail pending appeal.

In February 2025, his detention was suspended under electronic monitoring conditions.

On August 23, 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice charged two Tornado Cash co-founders, Roman Semenov and Roman Storm, with money laundering and sanctions violations. The latter was taken into custody.

In August 2025, a jury found Storm guilty of conspiracy to conduct an unlicensed money transmission business. After the verdict, the Department of Justice announced the cessation of prosecution on this charge for DeFi application developers.

Since December 2024, Heart has been subject to an Interpol “red notice” at the request of Finnish authorities. He is wanted for intentional tax evasion and assault.