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Weeks Before Trial, Tornado Cash’s Roman Storm Sounds Alarm: ‘If I Lose, DeFi Dies With Me’

by admin June 14, 2025

In brief

“If I lose, DeFi dies with me,” Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm tweeted.
Storm was charged by the DOJ in 2023 with conspiracy to commit money laundering, operating an unlicensed money transmitter business, and evading U.S. sanctions.
Storm and other DeFi advocates have argued that the prosecution unjustly holds software developers liable for the ways in which their software is used.

Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm issued one of his starkest rebukes yet of the Trump administration’s Department of Justice on Friday, arguing that if federal prosecutors prevail in the developer’s upcoming criminal trial, decentralized finance could be permanently destroyed.

“The DOJ wants to bury DeFi, saying I should’ve controlled it, added KYC, [and] never built it,” Storm wrote. “SDNY is trying to crush me, blocking every expert witness.”

“If I lose, DeFi dies with me,” the crypto developer continued. “The dream of financial freedom, the code I believed in—it all fades into darkness. This isn’t just my end; it’s ours.”

Storm was charged by the DOJ in 2023 with conspiracy to commit money laundering, operating an unlicensed money transmitter business, and evading U.S. sanctions, for his role in running Tornado Cash—a popular service that allows users to make their on-chain transactions difficult to trace. While such coin mixing platforms are popular among privacy advocates, they have also been employed by criminal organizations and U.S. state enemies like North Korea.

Earlier this year, after President Donald Trump retook power and directed numerous federal agencies to back off the digital assets industry, the DOJ shuttered its crypto-dedicated enforcement unit and directed prosecutors to no longer pursue criminal charges against coin mixing services for “acts of their end users.”

Many in crypto took the policy shift as a signal that the DOJ might soon pardon Storm. Immediately after returning to office, Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, a black market website powered by Bitcoin.

But Storm’s pardon never materialized. Last month, Trump’s DOJ said it would press forward with its case against the Tornado Cash co-founder, only dropping an element of a single charge that he failed to comply with money transmitting business registration requirements.

Storm and other DeFi advocates have argued that the prosecution unjustly holds software developers liable for the ways in which their software is used. Last year, another Tornado Cash developer, Alexey Pertsev, was convicted by a Dutch court that ruled the site was “intended for criminals.”

In a post on the social media platform X on Friday, the Ethereum Foundation said that it was donating $500,000 to Storm’s defense fund and that it would match up to an additional $750,000 in donations from the community. “Privacy is normal, and writing code is not a crime,” the non-profit tweeted.

While President Trump has made several pro-DeFI moves in recent months—signing a bill into law repealing an IRS rule protested by the sector, and supporting crypto legislation featuring carve-outs for decentralized finance protocols—industry advocates are now warning that successful prosecution of figures like Storm could cause significant harm to DeFi’s operating principles.

When reached by Decrypt and asked whether he now perceives the Trump administration to be hostile to DeFi, based on his continued prosecution, Storm referenced a recent legal filing made by the DeFi Education Fund, an industry lobbying group, in Alexey’s Pertsev’s ongoing appeal of his conviction in the Netherlands.

“Should we remove everything from the market that is known to be used by criminals for illegal activities?” the filing reads. “[S]oftware developers should not be held criminally liable for the actions of third parties who use their software to commit crimes.”

UPDATE (June 13, 2025, 6:58 p.m. ET): Adds information about Ethereum Foundation contribution to defense fund.

Edited by James Rubin

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June 14, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

A Roman Sands RE:Build release date and a tease for a new edition of Paratopic is exactly what the doctor ordered

by admin June 7, 2025

I’ve been excited about Roman Sands RE:Build since the moment I laid my eyes on it, particularly because it’s from the same studio behind the ever-haunting Paratopic. Roman Sands just has a ridiculously strong art direction to it, very much one that could easily be dubbed Y2K, but I think more accurately should be seen as an evolution of the aesthetic/ era. Almost as if this is the direction it could have gone in.

Just great stuff, not even counting the oddball gameplay, and as revealed in a new trailer, it’s got a release date now too: September 12th. That’s close enough for me to count down the days, but far away enough for me to think “I’d like to be playing this right now actually, ta very much.” The trailer offered a new look at its strange, puzzley hotel and all of its guests, as well as a tease for the things you’ll be getting up to (all of which seem quite ominous.

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The gameplay itself sees you attending to the demands of said guests as outlandish as they all are, but the clock is working against you. Specifically, a clock that’ll see the sun swallowing up the world. Terrifying! And a great hook. There’s a demo you can check out on Steam too, or you can just wishlist it if you want to wait for the full thing.

Excitingly, the release date trailer also had a mysterious tease for Paratopic: Overdub, seemingly an anniversary edition of the game. Over on its Steam page it’s described as a remaster/ remix/ sequel, and look, it could be none of those things and I’d still be in. Paratopic is a peak example of the modern trend of PS1-inspired games, using the aesthetic to really hone in on its subtle horrors. Whatever this new thing contains, I’ll take it. It’s coming September 12th too, so I’m sure like me you’ll be plenty busy that day!

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June 7, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Minecraft’s Jason Momoa and wrestler Roman Reigns tapped for Street Fighter roles

by admin May 23, 2025

Hot off the heels of his turn as Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison in A Minecraft Movie, Jason Momoa is reportedly in talks to star in another video game adaptation.

According to Deadline sources, Momoa is currently in talks for a role in Legendary’s live-action Street Fighter movie, based on Capcom’s fighting series. As for who Momoa may be playing should these talks prove successful, that for now remains unknown.

As well as Momoa, Andrew Koji (Bullet Train), Noah Centineo (Warfare) and WWE wrestler Roman Reigns (Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw) are all said to be in talks for the Street Fighter adaptation.

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Back in February of this year, it was announced Kitao Sakurai would direct the upcoming Street Fighter film, with Capcom “deeply involved” in the adaptation as well.

The film is set for a release next year, on 20th March, having first been announced back in 2023. Further details for now remain thin on the ground, but it sounds like production could soon be ramping up, so stay tuned for more. Personally, I would love to see a cameo from Kylie Minogue (but I am not holding my breath).

As for Momoa, well, he is probably riding high on the success of A Minecraft Movie right now. The live-action adaptation, which also starred Jack Black, became a meme-filled hit on its release in April. The film generated $301m worldwide on its first weekend, and has been such a success that there are already talks about a sequel.

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May 23, 2025 0 comments

NFT Gaming

FinCEN Opinion on Samourai Wallet ‘Irrelevant’ in Roman Storm Case

by admin May 22, 2025

Prosecutors in the case against Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm are attempting to to sidestep the possibility that a New York judge forces them to hand over additional evidence that could help Storm’s case.

In a Wednesday letter to the court, prosecutors pushed back against Storm’s lawyers’ assertions that they’d failed to meet their so-called Brady obligations — a constitutional requirement for prosecutors to turn over any potentially helpful evidence to the defense before trial.

At the heart of the debate is a recent production of evidence in another case in the Southern District of New York (SDNY): the legal pursuit of Samourai Wallet co-founders Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill. Both cases involve a crypto mixing service that prosecutors allege was knowingly used to launder crime proceeds,

In the Samourai Wallet case, however, prosecutors recently admitted to having a conversation with two Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) officials in 2023 — before pressing charges — in which the government employees said they didn’t believe the mixing service would qualify as a money transmitting business under their guidelines and didn’t need a license to operate. Lawyers for Rodriguez and Hill accused prosecutors of suppressing critical evidence and violating their right to due process. Last week, the judge overseeing the case denied their motion for a hearing on the matter, telling them instead to include their concerns in their pre-trial motion due at the end of the month.

Though the cases are separate, lawyers for Roman Storm expressed concern that the prosecution’s failure to inform them of their communications with FinCEN regarding Samourai Wallet’s status as a money transmitting business also potentially constituted a Brady violation in Storm’s case.

In their Wednesday response, prosecutors said that the FinCEN conversation wasn’t evidence.t was an opinion, not a fact, they stated, and therefore not required to be turned over to the defense. Prosecutors also claimed that their discussion with FinCEN was irrelevant to Storm’s case, because it wasn’t specifically about Tornado Cash.

“Tornado Cash simply was not part of the conversation,” prosecutors wrote. “While Samourai Wallet and the Tornado Cash service may share some superficial similarities, they operated quite differently.”

Prosecutors said that they didn’t have similar conversations with FinCEN about Tornado Cash, claiming that there were “no such interactions comparable to those described in the Rodriguez Disclosures.”

“As the government has repeatedly explained to the defense in this case, the government has neither sought nor obtained an opinion from any employee at FinCEN — or any other government agency — regarding whether the Tornado Cash service is subject to registration obligations,” prosecutors wrote. “Such an opinion — especially an informal opinion offered by employees who expressly disclaim to be speaking for the agency — would not be legally admissible and would not constitute Brady material.”

The case against Storm is expected to begin on July 14 in New York.

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May 22, 2025 0 comments