As Roman Storm, a co-founder of Tornado Cash, is facing charges in the United States for allegedly facilitating money laundering through the Ethereum-based crypto mixer, his cause has attracted the support of the venture capital firm Paradigm and the Electronic Frontier Foundation ( EFF).
Paradigm announced that it would volunteer$ 1.25 million to help Storm’s legal protection, while the EFF has filed an amicus brief in support of the designer.
Matt Huang, the co-founder of Paradigm, described the accusations as an attack on software developers when he announced the donation to Storm’s legitimate bank.
In a tweet, Huang wrote that the prosecution’s case threatens to make application developers accountable for the deeds of second events, which would have a cold impact on bitcoin and the rest of the world.
Paradigm may be donating$ 1.25M to help fund Roman Storm’s constitutional protection
The prosecution’s case threatens to make application developers accountable for alleged wrongdoing by next events, which would have a cold impact on bitcoin and other industries as well.
We must stand with @rstormsf https ://t.co/OvPHNYeGFD
— Matt Huang ( @matthuang ) January 28, 2025
Acknowledging Paradigm’s factor, Storm expressed his “enormous thanks” to the VC company in a post. He added that,” Your aid means the world, not just to me, but to every programmer fighting for justice and creativity. Thank you for backing my convictions and standing up for the fundamental guidelines.”
Civil liberties nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation ( EFF), meanwhile, has  , filed an amicus brief in support of Storm, warning that his prosecution could stifle privacy-focused software development. ̉
According to the Hell,” the EFF compared protection protocols like Tornado Cash to real money or crypto tools that can also be misused,” and that holding developers accountable for how their tools are used is an excess.
It added:” The administration’s prosecution raises larger civil rights concerns that was chill the potential growth of privacy-enhancing systems more loosely”.
Additionally, it criticized the use of the IEEPA, arguing that Congress should pass laws governing these systems rather than using large interpretations of existing sanctions laws.
has reached out to the EFF for reply, and it will release this article if they respond.
The Tornado Cash prosecutors
In August 2023, the U. S. Department of Justice ( DOJ) charged Tornado Cash founders Roman Storm and Roman Semenov with money laundering, sanctions violations, and operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business.
With Storm’s prosecution set for April 14, 2025, the result of his situation was include far-reaching repercussions for economic protection and program development.
The event comes as Tornado Cash’s constitutional system shifts.
In September, a New York court denied Storm’s motion to dismiss his expenses, stating that while components of Tornado Cash were unchanging, another aspects remained under designer power.
However, a Texas court just last week reversed the government’s decision to overturn U.S. Treasury sanctions on the penny mixer, finding that eternal smart contracts are not “property” under the IEEPA.
This decision comes in response to a similar one from November 2024, in which the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court determined that the Treasury’s legal authority to sanction eternal smart contracts was out of reach.
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