Attempt to challenge the accusation

Roman Storm, Mixer Co-founder Tornado Cash, appealed to the US Federal Court with a request to cancel his charge of ‘unlicensed transfer of money.’ The defense claims that the prosecutor’s office could not prove that the storm deliberately helped intruders use the service to launder funds.

According to the documents filed on September 30 to the Southern District Court of New York, the lawyers insist: the accusation is based only on assumptions and ‘neglect’, and not on proven intent.

“Storm allegedly knew about the abuse and did not take sufficient measures to prevent them. But this is a negligence theory that is contrary to the criteria of intent and the law,” the petition says.

What is a justification request

A motion for acquittal is used to cancel charges or verdict if the evidence of the prosecution is legally insufficient, even if they are recognized as reliable.

Tornado Cash and the fight for privacy

Tornado Cash – This is a decentralized and non-costodial smart contract for anonymizing Ethereum transactions, launched by Roman Storm and Roman Semyonov in 2019.

Service uses Zero-Knowledge Proof To break the connection between the sender and the recipient, enhancing financial privacy.

However, it was for this that Tornado Cash came under pressure from the authorities.

According to OFAC, through the protocol passed more $7 billion cryptocurrencies since 2019, and approximately 30% Allegedly, it was associated with illegal transactions.
In August 2023, Roman Storm was arrested by the FBI and the US Tax Authority, and Semyonov was included in the OFAC sanctions list.
The US Department of Justice also opposed the re-consideration of the case.

Crypto industry reaction

The crypto community criticizes the case against Tornado Cash sharply. Lobbyist organization Blockchain Association called his sentence a ‘dangerous precedent’ for developers.

“Roman Storm has created a privacy technology that didn’t involve controlling user funds. Tornado Cash is a non-costudy software, and users have always retained full control over their assets,” the association said.

Privacy as a battlefield

Since the advent of Bitcoin, the theme of privacy has been central to the crypto movement. But today the struggle is intensifying not only around decentralized protocols, but also in the context of new laws.

Recently co-founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin criticized the proposed EU law Chat Controlwhich will oblige messengers to implement local messages scanning before encrypting them.

“It is impossible to make society safe by depriving people of privacy. Any “black moves” created for the police will eventually be hacked and endanger everyone,” Buterin warned.

Many experts consider such steps to be too much interference. Diode co-founder Hans Rempel said such initiatives would only push users to web3 alternatives that could not be controlled.

Conclusion

The Tornado Cash case became a symbol of the conflict between state control and the right to privacy in the digital age.

If the court does not justify Roman Storm, this can set a dangerous precedent for all developers of decentralized decisions and seriously affect the future of the crypto industry.