Weeks Before Trial, Tornado Cash’s Roman Storm Sounds Alarm: ‘If I Lose, DeFi Dies With Me’

Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm issued one of his starkest rebukes yet of the Trump administration’s Department of Justice on Friday, arguing that if federal prosecutors prevail in the developer’s upcoming criminal trial, decentralized finance could be permanently destroyed. 

“The DOJ wants to bury DeFi, saying I should’ve controlled it, added KYC, [and] never built it,” Storm wrote. “SDNY is trying to crush me, blocking every expert witness.”

“If I lose, DeFi dies with me,” the crypto developer continued. “The dream of financial freedom, the code I believed in—it all fades into darkness. This isn’t just my end; it’s ours.”

Storm was charged by the DOJ in 2023 with conspiracy to commit money laundering, operating an unlicensed money transmitter business, and evading U.S. sanctions, for his role in running Tornado Cash—a popular service that allows users to make their on-chain transactions difficult to trace. While such coin mixing platforms are popular among privacy advocates, they have also been employed by criminal organizations and U.S. state enemies like North Korea.

Earlier this year, after President Donald Trump retook power and directed numerous federal agencies to back off the digital assets industry, the DOJ shuttered its crypto-dedicated enforcement unit and directed prosecutors to no longer pursue criminal charges against coin mixing services for “acts of their end users.” 

Many in crypto took the policy shift as a signal that the DOJ might soon pardon Storm. Immediately after returning to office, Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, a black market website powered by Bitcoin.

But Storm’s pardon never materialized. Last month, Trump’s DOJ said it would press forward with its case against the Tornado Cash co-founder, only dropping an element of a single charge that  he failed to comply with money transmitting business registration requirements. 

Storm and other DeFi advocates have argued that the prosecution unjustly holds software developers liable for the ways in which their software is used. Last year, another Tornado Cash developer, Alexey Pertsev, was convicted by a Dutch court that ruled the site was “intended for criminals.”

While President Trump has made several pro-DeFI moves in recent months—signing a bill into law repealing an IRS rule protested by the sector, and supporting crypto legislation featuring carve-outs for decentralized finance protocols—industry advocates are now warning that successful prosecution of figures like Storm could cause significant harm to DeFi’s operating principles. 

When reached by Decrypt and asked whether he now perceives the Trump administration to be hostile to DeFi, based on his continued prosecution, Storm referenced a recent legal filing made by the DeFi Education Fund, an industry lobbying group, in Alexey’s Pertsev’s ongoing appeal of his conviction in the Netherlands.

“Should we remove everything from the market that is known to be used by criminals for illegal activities?” the filing reads. “[S]oftware developers should not be held criminally liable for the actions of third parties who use their software to commit crimes.”

Edited by James Rubin