Coindesk reported that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) expressed opposition to a motion filed by Roman Storm, co-founder of Tornado Cash, in March to dismiss charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering. The DOJ stated in court documents that the motion involved disputed facts that should be discussed and considered by a jury.
In response to Storm’s argument of code writing freedom in the motion, the DOJ believed that the defendant’s subjective interpretation of Tornado Cash’s services was too subjective and attempted to distance himself from the fact that the smart contract had assisted in money laundering. The DOJ stated in the document that the defendant’s own explanation of how Tornado Cash services operated was subjective and could not be simply asserted based on controversial views or claims of lacking specific intent for certain actions. The DOJ added that “this disputed fact must be discussed by a jury and is not appropriate to be raised as a motion at the current early stage.”
Regarding Storm’s lawyer’s claim that he had already relinquished ownership of the contract and could not prevent criminal entities from using Tornado Cash, the DOJ also objected. The DOJ argued that during the period mentioned in their indictment (from 2019 to August 2022), Storm and his co-founder still had control over the contract. The prosecution team, led by Damian Williams, emphasized in the document that Storm should be responsible for the operation of Tornado Cash and criticized his failure to implement effective methods to prevent sanctioned addresses from using the service.
Currently, Storm is scheduled to stand trial in September this year, while the other co-founder, Semenov, is still at large. In addition to the high-profile Tornado Cash case, enforcement actions against mixing protocols seem to have never ceased in various countries in recent months and years.
However, just a few days ago, Ki Young Ju, CEO of CryptoQuant, voiced support for mixing protocols in response to the Samourai Wallet case. He stated that privacy is the core value of Bitcoin and that mixing protocols themselves are not criminal activities. Even cryptocurrency exchanges use mixing to protect user privacy, which is like blaming the inventor of a knife instead of the person using it.
Furthermore, whistleblower Edward Snowden, in a tweet, expressed that the recent crackdown on mixing protocols is an attack on people’s financial privacy and that the developers of financial privacy applications should not be treated as criminals, as privacy should be considered a fundamental right and not an exception.
CryptoQuant
Roman Semenov
Roman Storm
Tornado Cash
cryptocurrency regulation
mixing protocols