Roman Storm seeks acquittal of Tornado Cash money transmission charge

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Roman Storm, co-founder of Tornado Cash, has asked a US national justice to acquit him of his sole condemnation for unlicensed wealth transmission and the jury’s hung counts for wealth laundering and sanctions violations, arguing prosecutors failed to beryllium helium intended to assistance atrocious actors misuse the crypto mixer.

According to ineligible documents filed connected Sept. 30 and reviewed by Cointelegraph, Storm’s defence argued prosecutors failed to beryllium helium intended to assistance atrocious actors usage Tornado Cash This, according to the defense, would nullify the grounds for his condemnation based connected negligent inaction.

“Storm and atrocious actors was a assertion that helium knew they were utilizing Tornado Cash and failed to instrumentality capable measures to halt them. This is simply a negligence theory,” the preliminary connection reads.

The defence further claims that “lacking affirmative grounds that Mr. Storm acted with the intent to assistance atrocious actors, ”the authorities attempted to conscionable its willfulness load by claiming that the suspect failed to forestall misuse. “It is simply a assertion that is antithetical to the willfulness modular and unsupported by the law,” the question states.

The filing is portion of a question for acquittal, which asks the justice to propulsion retired charges oregon a verdict due to the fact that the prosecution’s evidence, adjacent if taken arsenic true, is legally insufficient.

Fighting for the close to privacy

Tornado Cash is simply a decentralized and non-custodial astute contract-based Ether (ETH) mixer that leverages zero-knowledge proof-based encryption to heighten transaction privacy. It was launched by Roman Storm and Roman Semenov successful 2019 and allows users to interruption the onchain traceability of their ETH.

The work ended up successful ineligible occupation chiefly due to the fact that it was allegedly utilized to launder billions of dollars successful illicit funds, including funds linked to North Korean hackers. Tornado Cash was besides accused of facilitating wealth laundering, with the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) claiming it processed implicit $7 cardinal successful integer currency since 2019 and 30% of it was allegedly linked to amerciable activities.

Storm was arrested successful precocious August 2023, portion co-founder Semenov was added to OFAC’s Specially Designated Nationals list. The apprehension was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation Division successful Washington, D.C. In precocious August, a US Department of Justice authoritative opposed Storm’s retrial.

The lawsuit has drawn crisp disapproval from the crypto industry. In August, the pro-crypto US lobby radical Blockchain Association stated that Storm’s condemnation could set a “dangerous” precedent for developers and privacy. The radical besides pointed retired that Storm did not workout power implicit the crypto that went done the protocol.

“Roman Storm built privateness tech that operated without his custody/control implicit the funds of Tornado Cash users. [...] Tornado Cash functioned arsenic non-custodial software, meaning that users maintained full power of their assets astatine each times.”

Crypto assemblage astatine the forefront of the combat for privacy

Bitcoin (BTC) and the broader crypto assemblage were calved from a pro-cryptography question known arsenic the cypherpunks. While galore successful the crypto assemblage are present focused solely connected the fiscal aspects of blockchain technology, privacy remains a cardinal battleground for the industry.

Last week, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin criticized the European Union’s projected “Chat Control” legislation, informing that it threatens the close to privateness successful integer communications. The instrumentality successful question would necessitate messaging platforms to present client-side pre-encryption scanning of contented for amerciable content.

“You cannot marque nine unafraid by making radical insecure,” Buterin argued. He besides highlighted that backdoors built for instrumentality enforcement are “inevitably hackable” and undermine the information of everyone.

Some experts presumption this arsenic a misstep by regulators that will punctual users to crook to ungovernable web3 alternatives. Hans Rempel, co-founder and CEO of Diode, precocious told Cointelegraph that the instrumentality is simply a unsafe overreach and “giving an inherently corruptible entity astir unlimited visibility into the backstage lives of individuals is incompatible with an honorable worth connection of integer privacy.”

Magazine: Can privateness past successful US crypto argumentation aft Roman Storm’s conviction?

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