Overview
- Storm was convicted by a Manhattan jury last August on an unlicensed money-transmitting count, remains free on bail pending sentencing, and faces up to five years in prison after jurors deadlocked on other charges.
- In a Jan. 9 public letter, Buterin argued that privacy-preserving tools protect users and that publishing open-source code is protected speech, noting he has used such software for lawful purposes.
- Buterin donated 50 ETH to Storm’s legal defense, the Ethereum Foundation pledged $500,000 with matching commitments, and the defense fund reported raising more than $6.3 million in 2025.
- Tornado Cash was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in 2022 over alleged laundering tied to hacks including those by North Korea’s Lazarus Group, with Elliptic estimating over $1.5 billion in illicit flows, and the sanctions were lifted in March 2025.
- After Storm’s verdict, DOJ criminal division head Matthew Galeotti indicated a narrower approach to the charge at issue, while in a separate Dutch case developer Alexey Pertsev was sentenced to about 64 months and later released to electronic monitoring pending appeal.