In a spectacle that might have amused even the most cynical salon habitué, the DeFi Education Fund—an assemblage of those who profess to understand the arcane whims of digital ledgers—has taken the extraordinary step of beseeching the Trump administration to put an end to what they dub the “lawless campaign” of the current Department of Justice against one Roman Storm, co-founder of that notorious crypto contraption, Tornado Cash.
With all the subtlety of a telegram, their April 28 missive to White House crypto czar David Sacks implores the former president to extricate Mr. Storm from his legal quagmire, accusing the Biden-era bureaucrats of attempting to criminalize open-source software development—an assertion bound to raise eyebrows in certain circles and possibly a glass or two in others. 🥂
One might almost feel sympathy for poor Storm, charged last August with laundering a sum that rolls over a billion dollars—a figure so large it could buy several island retreats, or at least a moderately sized yacht with questionable fuel efficiency. The man stands accused of conspiracy to facilitate money laundering, operating an unlicensed money transmitter, and violating U.S. sanctions, with a potential sentence that makes one ponder if he ought to refine his prison wardrobe in advance. 🎩
Storm’s audacious claim, that Tornado Cash is “immutable,” and thus beyond his command, was summarily dismissed by Judge Katherine Polk Failla—who appears to be a person not given to indulging extravagant legal fantasies. Both the initial motion and its sequel were rebuffed, much to the dismay of those who fancy themselves defenders of digital libertarianism.
The DeFi Education Fund’s main gripe is that the DOJ is testing a new legal theory: holding developers responsible for how others employ their code—akin to blaming a novelist for a reader’s misdeeds inspired by fiction. The Fund warns that such fanciful reasoning threatens to bring open-source development to a grinding halt, which may or may not spell doom for civilization as we know it. 😬
Curiously, the Fund notes that this prosecution runs quite counter to earlier Treasury Department guidance—issued back in the halcyon days of Trump’s first term—wherein developers of peer-to-peer protocols were deemed innocent of being money transmitters. It seems the rules of this game change more often than a fox’s mood at a henhouse.
In their epistle, the Fund laments that such prosecutions empower a wave of politically-motivated enforcement, endangering every open-source coder who dares pen a line of code in good faith. Should this legal precedent stick, one imagines AI programmers and healthcare app developers trembling in their keyboards, fearful their creations might someday be seized upon as instruments of crime. 🤖💉
Their clarion call insists that to crown America the “crypto capital of the planet,” the nation must shield its intrepid software builders from prosecutorial overreach. The stakes, they say, could not be higher—an assertion that surely justifies a spot of dramatic music and perhaps a fainting spell or two.
Meanwhile, the petition has gathered more than 253 signatures, boasting notable endorsements from Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko, Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang, Bankless co-founder Ryan Sean Adams, and assorted luminaries who, one suspects, have a vested interest in keeping the digital money wheel spinning merrily.
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2025-04-29 09:50