The cryptocurrency community has come together to support the developers of the former crypto mixing service Tornado Cash, who are facing charges of money laundering, sanctions violations, and running an unlicensed money-transmitting business. One of the developers has already been convicted and sentenced to jail.
In response to the arrests of Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm and developer Alexey Pertsev, the crypto community has established JusticeDAO, a group that aims to raise funds for the legal defense of the arrested individuals.
Through a fundraiser named “Free Alexey & Roman” on the decentralized platform Juicebox, the group has raised over 654 Ether (ETH), equivalent to $2.3 million. Additionally, 70 ETH was raised via the JusticeDAO page.
Juicebox has released a publicly available spreadsheet tracking the expenses of the Free Alexey & Roman fund. The fund has spent $1.39 million on legal fees between December 2023 and May 2024. It is projected to spend an additional $2.8 million in the next five months and another $400,000 on expert research and legal fees, with total fees for 2024 expected to reach nearly $3.35 million.
The fund has received significant contributions from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who is known for advocating privacy and has published various papers on enhancing privacy on Ethereum.
While advocates in the cryptocurrency community argue that creating tools to protect financial privacy, such as a crypto mixer, is not a crime, regulators hold a different view. Despite the support from the crypto community, the founders of Tornado Cash are facing serious charges.
In 2022, the United States Treasury Department accused Tornado Cash of being used by criminals to launder over $7 billion in crypto assets over nearly three years. In August 2023, co-founders Storm and Roman Semenov were charged with money laundering and sanctions violations. Storm was arrested by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, while Semenov was sanctioned by the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.
Storm is facing three charges and has pleaded not guilty to all of them. Pertsev, on the other hand, was found guilty of money laundering and sentenced to five years and four months in prison for allegedly laundering $1.2 billion worth of illicit assets on the platform.
The case has sparked a debate about the legal responsibility of developers for the end-use of the tools they create. Legal experts predict that the outcome of Storm’s trial will have significant implications for the crypto industry, particularly for privacy-focused services. The pressure on developers who work on similar projects is expected to increase in the near future.