Tornado Cash Co-founder Seeks to Drop Charges

Roman Storm, co-founder of Tornado Cash, is fighting accusations related to his cryptocurrency mixing business.

Roman Storm, one of the co-founders of Tornado Cash, a cryptocurrency mixing business, has filed a motion to have the accusations against him dropped.

Storm has offered numerous legal defenses to refute the allegations against him since his arrest and subsequent charges stemming from his conduct in founding the Tornado Cash platform.

The First Amendment’s guarantee of free expression is one of the defenses cited, and it plays a significant role in the case that this constitutional clause shields the act of developing code.

Storm faced accusations of running an unregistered money-transferring company, engaging in money-laundering schemes and violating the International Economic Emergency Powers Act.

The most severe penalty for these charges is up to twenty years in prison. Storm’s defense team, in the in the meantime, maintains that the software work that he and his associates did was a legitimate use of their First Amendment rights and that the indictment is gravely flawed.

Storm’s legal team filed a motion that challenges the fundamental elements of the charges by bringing up several important issues.

The defense argues that because Tornado Cash users maintained control over their money and were not directly billed by the company, Tornado Cash cannot be classified as a “money-transmitting business” under the terms of the indictment. 

Furthermore, the application casts doubt on the possibility of a conspiracy because, long before the purported criminal acts took place, the co-founders of Tornado Cash had already turned over the platform administration of its smart contracts.

The defense further emphasized that Storm and the latter users of the Tornado Cash platform for illicit activities had no direct connection. This premise, according to the defense, is essential to the argument that Storm and his colleagues cannot legally be held accountable for anyone else who chooses to use the software they independently produced.

The cryptocurrency and decentralized finance (DeFi) communities paid close attention to the case involving Roman Storm and the other Tornado Cash inventors.

The lawsuits of these developers, particularly the one involving Alexey Pertsev, who is currently in custody in the Netherlands, have ignited discussions about the responsibilities of open-source software developers and the jurisdiction of regulators in matters pertaining to digital currency.

The Bitcoin community has come together to support the accused developers, raising $1.5 million for a fund dedicated to their legal defense.

This fund aims to assist the developers in their legal struggles against accusations that many in the community see as a danger to the freedom of speech, creativity and privacy that are the foundation of the Bitcoin ecosystem.