TechFlow News reports that on March 9, according to DL News, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, in its latest congressional report, acknowledged for the first time that privacy tools such as token mixers can serve legitimate financial privacy purposes—a marked softening of language compared to previous statements—and this is viewed as the latest signal of the Trump administration’s ongoing regulatory easing toward the crypto industry.
Jake Kennis, Senior Research Analyst at Nansen, noted that three converging forces—geopolitical tensions, tightening regulation, and the maturation of zero-knowledge (ZK) technology—are jointly propelling the privacy sector from a fringe speculative domain into a mainstream institutional theme. Capital is now accelerating into compliant privacy projects such as Railgun, Nocturne, Zama, Aleo, and Nillion, spanning use cases including tokenization, payments, trade finance, and custody.
However, risks remain significant: The Treasury’s report also revealed that North Korean hackers laundered billions of dollars via mixers between 2024 and 2025; the European Union likewise plans to ban exchanges from listing privacy coins such as Zcash and Monero by 2027. Meanwhile, developers of privacy tools—including Tornado Cash and Samourai Wallet—have faced judicial prosecution in both the U.S. and Europe, further intensifying compliance pressures across the industry.
