Roman Storm, a creator of the privacy-centric Tornado Cash protocol, inquired of the open source software community about their worries regarding potential retroactive prosecution by the US Department of Justice for building decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms.
Storm questioned DeFi developers: “How can you be so certain you won’t face charges from the DOJ as a money service business for creating a non-custodial protocol?”
The DOJ could pursue a case, claiming that any decentralized, non-custodial service should have been constructed as a custodial service, as was alleged in his case, Storm elaborated, referencing his recent acquittal motion, which was submitted on September 30.
“Our company has no capacity to instigate changes or take action regarding the Tornado Cash protocol — it is a decentralized software protocol that cannot be controlled by any single entity or actor,” Storm stated in the acquittal documents.
Storm was found guilty in August on one of three counts; the jury convicted him of conspiracy to run an unlicensed money transmission business, establishing a troubling legal precedent for open-source software developers and causing upheaval in the crypto community.
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The fight for privacy continues
After the verdict, legal experts deliberated whether US prosecutors might follow through with money laundering and sanctions charges against Storm in another trial.
The jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision during deliberations, ultimately finding Storm guilty only on the unlicensed money transmitter charge.
“If the Trump administration aims for the USA to be the crypto capital of the world, then the DOJ must not be allowed to retry the two deadlocked charges,” Jake Chervinsky, chief legal officer at Variant Fund, commented on X at that time.
Matthew Galeotti, acting assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s criminal division, indicated in August that the DOJ would not initiate a retrial of Storm and would not pursue similar cases.
“Our perspective is that merely writing code, absent ill intent, is not a crime,” Galeotti remarked to attendees at the American Innovation Project Summit, which focuses on regulatory advocacy and pro-crypto legislation in the US.
“The department will not use indictments as a mechanism for law-making. The department ought not to leave innovators uncertain about what actions could result in criminal prosecution,” he added.
Magazine: Can privacy survive in US crypto policy after Roman Storm’s conviction?
