Jury Provides Verdict on Tornado Cash Trial

In the landmark “US vs Roman Storm” case, the Tornado Cash founder was found guilty of conspiracy to run an unlicensed money transmittal business and innocent of others.

This case has been a landmark battle for privacy rights and the decentralized nature of crypto. Roman Storm argued that he wasn’t responsible for other actors’ usage of his software, and the jury has established a new precedent on the subject.

Tornado Cash Founder Declared

The trial of Roman Storm, founder of Tornado Cash, has been hotly followed by the crypto industry since beginning last month. The proceedings left a bad taste in the community’s mouth, with threats of additional charges against Storm’s witnesses. Today, however, we finally got a definitive ruling from the jury:

So, why has the crypto world been so invested in this case? Simply put, privacy has been a core value of this whole ecosystem, ever since Satoshi Nakamoto made Bitcoin both trustless and decentralized. Storm’s lawyers have fervently argued that Tornado Cash stuck to these principles, never becoming directly complicit in money laundering.

Tornado Cash is a piece of software intended to protect crypto users’ privacy. It mixes tokens from disparate sources together to obscure transaction histories, and criminal organizations certainly employed it for money laundering. However, this is a far cry from directly committing these crimes.

In short, this trial is a test of what sort of decentralized protocols the US legal system will tolerate. This mixed result is somewhat positive for the community. Storm was found innocent of serious crimes like sanctions evasion and money laundering.

From here, it’s unclear what kind of punishment he might receive for the remaining charge, but the maximum sentence is five years.