Roman Storm, a developer of the Tornado Cash privacy-focused protocol, inquired among the open-source software community about their worries regarding potential retroactive prosecution by the US Department of Justice for creating decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms.
Storm posed a question to DeFi developers: “What makes you confident that you won’t face charges from the DOJ as a money service business for developing a non-custodial protocol?”
The DOJ might pursue a case, contending that any decentralized, non-custodial service should have been created as a custodial service, as evidenced in his situation, Storm explained, referring to his recent motion for acquittal, which was submitted on September 30.
“Our company does not possess any capability to enact changes or take actions concerning the Tornado Cash protocol — it is a decentralized software protocol that cannot be controlled by any single entity or individual,” Storm stated in the acquittal documents.
Storm was convicted in August on one of three charges; the jury found him guilty of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmission business, establishing a troubling legal precedent for open-source software developers and causing significant unrest in the crypto community.
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The fight for privacy continues
After the verdict, legal experts speculated on whether US prosecutors would continue to pursue the money laundering and sanctions charges against Storm in a subsequent trial.
The jury was deadlocked during discussions and could not reach a unanimous decision on those counts, resulting in Storm’s conviction solely 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 should not retry the two deadlocked charges,” Jake Chervinsky, chief legal officer at venture capital firm Variant Fund, noted on X around that time.
Matthew Galeotti, the acting assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s criminal division, indicated in August that the DOJ would not pursue a retrial of Storm nor prosecute similar cases.
“We believe that merely writing code, without malicious intent, is not a crime,” Galeotti stated at the American Innovation Project Summit, an event focusing on regulatory advocacy and pro-crypto legislation in the US.
“The department will not use indictments as a legislative tool. The department ought to provide clarity to innovators regarding what actions could lead to criminal prosecution,” he added.
Magazine: Can privacy endure in US crypto policy after Roman Storm’s conviction?
