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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

Esports

How to find and complete the sixth trial in Dune: Awakening

by admin June 11, 2025

The Sixth Trial of Aql is one of the most disorienting and gear-sensitive challenges in Dune: Awakening.

While other trials might test your movement or combat skills, this one throws you into a confusing cave system deep in hostile high-level territory, where simply finding the altar is a puzzle of its own. Add in the possibility of aggressive NPCs, blocked paths, and maze-like corridors, and it’s easy to see why many players hit a wall here.

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After getting lost more times than I care to admit, I’ve mapped out the correct path and broken down what you’ll face so you can reach and complete the trial without wasting time or dying needlessly.

Sixth Trial location

To begin, you need to travel to the top northeast corner of the map, where you’ll find Devil’s Eye Cavern.

Dexerto

The cave entrance is nestled in the rocky cliffs and easy to miss, so keep your map open. Once inside, immediately place a respawn beacon. The area is high-level and not forgiving if you lack solid gear.

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Expect resistance: enemies may appear inside the cave. Bring a decent weapon and healing supplies. You’ll also find some decent loot here, including a rifle and standard resources.

The biggest challenge is navigation. The cavern has multiple blocked paths, misleading corridors, and dead ends. The correct route involves descending and looping around into a partially hidden passage that leads to the trial site. When you see collapsed paths and murals, you’re on the right track.

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How to solve the Sixth Trial

Unlike earlier trials, the Sixth Trial is more of a lore-based experience than a combat gauntlet. Once you reach the altar, you’ll find it damaged and surrounded by murals referencing the Zensunni wanderers (ancestors to the Fremen).

Interact with the altar. You won’t face a fight here; instead, the trial focuses on discovery and understanding. It hints at the spiritual journey of the Fremen, their migration, and their transformation.

Your character will reflect on the destruction and beauty of the place, noting connections between ancient traditions and present trials. After this moment of quiet insight, the trial concludes automatically.

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If you want to get all the codes for Dune Awakening, we’ve got you covered.

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June 11, 2025 0 comments

Esports

Ubisoft trial witnesses testify to “being tied to a chair, forced to do handstands, and subjected to constant comments about sex”

by admin June 9, 2025

Ubisoft developers have told a French court that former execs Serge Hascoet, Tommy Francois, and Guillaume Patrux allegedly perpetuated a “systemic” culture of sexism and abuse.

Former chief creative officer Serge Hascoët and ex-VP of editorial and creative services Tommy François both left the publisher in summer 2020, following allegations of widespread abuse, harassment, and discrimination within Ubisoft, including claims against the two executives. Former director Guillaume Patrux has similarly been accused of harassment and bullying. In all, five former executives from Ubisoft were arrested by French police in 2023 following a year-long investigation into sexual assault and harassment within the company. All three defendants deny the charges.

As reported by The Guardian, the trial, which began at the beginning of this month, has heard witnesses tell of feeling “terrified” and “like pieces of meat,” with state prosecutor Antoine Haushalter reporting “overwhelming” evidence of harassment.

“In four days of hearings, female former staff members variously described being tied to a chair, forced to do handstands, subjected to constant comments about sex and their bodies, having to endure sexist and homophobic jokes, drawings of penises being stuck to computers, a manager who farted in workers’ faces or scribbled on women with marker pens, gave unsolicited shoulder massages, played pornographic films in an open-plan office, and another executive who cracked a whip near people’s heads,” The Guardian reports.

Likening the culture to a “boys club” between 2010 and 2020, one alleged victim told the court: “The sexual remarks and sexual jokes were almost daily.”

A woman who worked for François alleged the former VP made her do handstand wearing a skirt.

“He was my superior and I was afraid of him,” she said. “He made me do handstands. I did it to get it over with and get rid of him.”

He is also accused of kissing a member of staff on the lips without consent at a Christmas party as his colleagues “restrained her by the arms and back,” while a different witness said that during a US trip, he “grabbed [her] by the hair and kissed [her] by force.” No one present reacted or stopped him, and when she reported him to HR on her return, she was told “don’t make a big thing of it.” She later had to refute rumors she’d been caught “snogging” François “even though he knew it had been an assault.”

The woman reports these incidents made her feel “stupefied, humiliated and professionally discredited.” François denies all charges, claims there was a “culture of joking around” at the studio, and insists: “I never tried to harm anyone.”

Hascoët is similarly accused of sexual harassment and bullying. He reportedly told colleagues at an away day that one of the senior female colleagues did not have enough sex, and said he would “show how to calm her” by having sex with her in the next room. He’s also alleged to have talked abut sex at the office, bullied his assistants, and made them undertake personal tasks during the working day, such as picking up parcels. The former exec denies all charges, saying: “I have never wanted to harass anyone and I don’t think I have.”

Patrux, also accused of sexual harassment and bullying, allegedly punched walls, mimed punching staff, “played with a cigarette lighter near workers’ faces, setting alight a man’s beard,” and “threatened to carry out an office shooting.” He also reportedly cracked a whip in the faces of his colleagues.

After four days of hearings, the judges have retired to consider the evidence and reach a verdict. All three men deny the charges.

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June 9, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

How One Keto Trial Set Off a New War in the Nutrition World

by admin June 4, 2025

While the study was still in the recruitment phase, Nadolsky left the team.

Entrenched Positions

Klatt, of UC Berkeley, is extremely well-versed in nutrition research and the current online debates around cholesterol. He’s written about this study and its fallout on his personal Substack, and calls Nadolsky a friend. Klatt discussed the study with Nadolsky while it was ongoing, and many aspects concerned him.

Klatt brought up issues of undisclosed biases to the Lundquist Institute, the host of the trial, along with Dave Feldman’s “strongly vested interest” in the results of the study that was not properly disclosed, claiming he was “a conflicted party with no training in the biomedical sciences.” His email to the Institute about these issues went unanswered. “I think this study has gotten to the point of being extremely unethical,” Klatt says.

“All authors adhered to the conflicts-of-interest disclosure guidelines the journal required,” Soto-Mata says. “Our study was independently reviewed, approved, and monitored by an expert Research Ethics committee, all its recommendations were followed, and all its standards were met.”

While some researchers and physicians are tearing the study apart, or using it to show that keto can have adverse effects, Klatt doesn’t draw any strong conclusions. “People are talking past each other,” he says. Generally speaking, there are two clear camps, with one thinking the traditional lipid hypothesis holds up, and another thinking the new lipid energy model might work. Klatt puts himself in a third camp, asking: “Why are we trying to interpret this study at all?”

“I’m an editor at the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,” Klatt says, “and I would like to believe that we would have rejected this outright without even sending it out for peer review, because it has so many obvious issues.” He is worried about people using this flawed study as proof the consensus on the risks of LDL cholesterol has been “debunked,” which it has not.

One of the study’s coauthors, Matthew Budoff, a professor of medicine at UCLA as well as an investigator at the Lundquist Institute, acknowledged in an email to WIRED that there had been “incredible scrutiny of the data on social media, which is more than expected based on my prior publications.” He noted the research team is seeking to have the paper incorporate corrections, but that this is ultimately at the discretion of the journal. A response to the Letter to the Editor from the coauthors clarifies some of the issues, he wrote.

That reply to the Letter to the Editor has now been published—and reveals that the study’s data may support the conventional position on the risk of cholesterol after all. The study’s authors share that the “pooled median change” in NCPV in the participants—the rise in the type of plaque the study was set up to investigate, but which originally wasn’t explicitly quantified in the paper—was an alarming 42.8 percent. The reply goes on to state that the study’s findings were “compatible with a causal role of ApoB in atherosclerosis”—the build-up of fat in the arteries—which they’ve “acknowledged and supported in previous publications.” The letter says that not mentioning this percentage increase in NCPV “was a sincere oversight, not intentional selective reporting.”

But this concession comes after the horse has bolted. Feldman’s hypothesis is already appearing in laypeople’s research—with the keto diet having been among the most Googled diets in recent years, and keto products a growing multibillion-dollar industry. Answering the query “What is special about Lean Mass Hyper-Responders,” ChatGPT provides the lipid energy model, Feldman’s argument against the consensus on cholesterol, among the initial explanations for why there is so much controversy and interest. There is also a Cholesterol Code documentary in the works—which covers Feldman’s personal experience and his research, including this study—which Feldman predicts will be available on a major streaming service sometime this year.

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June 4, 2025 0 comments

GameFi Guides

SafeMoon CEO Found Guilty in US Crypto Fraud Trial

by admin May 22, 2025

In brief

Braden Karony, CEO of SafeMoon, was convicted in a U.S. federal court of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering.
Prosecutors said Karony misled investors about access to the token’s liquidity pool and used millions in diverted funds for real estate and luxury cars.
The SafeMoon token once reached a market cap of more than $8 billion before collapsing amid fraud allegations.

A U.S. federal jury has found Braden Karony, the chief executive of digital asset firm SafeMoon, guilty on all counts in a crypto fraud case that prosecutors said led to the misappropriation of millions of dollars in investor funds.

Karony was convicted of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering following a 12-day trial before U.S. District Judge Eric R. Komitee in the Eastern District of New York. He faces up to 45 years in prison when sentenced.

A jury also ordered the forfeiture of one residential property and the proceeds from the sale of another, amounting to roughly $2 million.

Prosecutors said the scheme undermined investor confidence in digital assets and contributed to broader concerns about fraud in the crypto market.

“The SafeMoon digital asset was anything but safe and turned out to be pie in the sky for investors who were deliberately misled by Karony, a man who sought to get rich quick by stealing and diverting millions of dollars,” U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella, Jr. said in a statement.

Prosecutors alleged Karony and his “co-conspirators” misled investors about the structure and safety of SafeMoon, a token issued in 2021 that applied a 10% transaction tax on transfers.

Half of that fee was purportedly redistributed to token holders, while the remainder was said to be locked in a liquidity pool to support trading.

In reality, the Justice Department said Karony and others retained access to the liquidity pool and diverted substantial funds for personal use.

Despite public claims that they did not hold or trade SafeMoon tokens, Karony and others repeatedly bought and sold the asset for personal gain, including during peak prices, the court heard.

The diverted funds were used to purchase multiple properties, luxury vehicles, including an Audi R8 and Tesla, and custom trucks, according to the indictment.

Karony is accused of concealing his trading activity and use of investor funds through a series of pseudonymous wallets and unhosted accounts on centralized exchanges.

He personally obtained more than $9 million in crypto assets from the scheme, authorities said.

One co-defendant, Thomas Smith, has pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing. Another, Kyle Nagy, remains at large.

The case was investigated by the FBI, IRS Criminal Investigation, and Homeland Security Investigations, with assistance from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

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May 22, 2025 0 comments

Esports

Ubisoft CEO to be summoned to court in Ubisoft harassment trial

by admin May 22, 2025

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot and human resources director Marie Derain will be summoned to court to testify in the trial of three former Ubisoft executives accused of sexist and racist behaviors.

As reported by the union Solidaires Informatique via VGC, Guillemot and Derain have been called in the trial of Serge Hascoet, Tommy Francois, and Guillaume Patrux, all of whom have been accused of sexual harassment. After delays pertaining to errors by the prosecution, the trial is set to begin on June 2, 2025.

Former chief creative officer Serge Hascoët and ex-VP of editorial and creative services Tommy François both left the publisher in summer 2020, following allegations of widespread abuse, harassment, and discrimination within Ubisoft, including claims against the two executives. In all, five former executives from Ubisoft were arrested by French police in 2023 following a year-long investigation into sexual assault and harassment within the company.

“Beyond the personal responsibility of these three executives, this trial will highlight Ubisoft’s responsibility in setting up a system aimed at keeping harassers in place while silencing their victims,” the union said (as translated by machine).

“As Mr. Beckers indicated during the March hearing, ‘this case is broader and involves many more people, both on the side of the victims and the defendants.’ It is not a question of a few individual actions, but of a well-oiled mechanism of insularity, work organization, and management that allowed this violence to continue within the company for years. One of the defendants’ lawyers himself said: ‘Ubisoft is the ghost of the case.'”

The statement said Guillemot and Derain had been summoned to highlight the “systemic nature of harassment” at Ubisoft.

Last week, Ubisoft released its financial results for the full 2024-25 fiscal year, reporting a “solid balance sheet” and “very strong praise” for Assassin’s Creed Shadows – which delivered the second-highest Day One sales in franchise history after Valhalla – despite hefty drops in revenue, net bookings, digital net bookings, and back-catalog net bookings across the year.

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May 22, 2025 0 comments