A petition has been submitted by the DeFi Education Fund to White House crypto czar David Sacks, requesting that charges against Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm be dropped by prosecutors.
A petition has been submitted by the crypto lobby group, the DeFi Education Fund, to the Trump administration, urging the end of what is claimed to be the “lawless prosecution” of open-source software developers, including Roman Storm, the creator of the crypto mixing service Tornado Cash.
In a letter to White House crypto czar David Sacks on April 28, the group urged that immediate action be taken by President Donald Trump “to discontinue the Biden-era Department of Justice’s lawless campaign to criminalize open-source software development.”
The prosecution of Storm was specifically mentioned in the letter, with charges being brought against him in August 2023 for allegedly helping launder over $1 billion in crypto through Tornado Cash. His trial is still scheduled for July, and his fellow co-founder, Roman Semenov, remains at large, believed to be in Russia.
It was stated by the DeFi Education Fund that, in Storm’s case, the Department of Justice is attempting to hold software developers criminally liable for how their code is used by others, which is “not only absurd in principle, but also sets a precedent that could potentially chill all crypto development in the United States.”
It was also called for by the group that the prosecution be recognized as contradictory to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) guidance from Trump’s first term, which established that developers of self-custodial, peer-to-peer protocols are not considered money transmitters.
“It is not just innovation that is chilled by this kind of legal environment — it is frozen,” was argued by them. It was also added in the letter that politically-motivated enforcement is empowered, putting every open-source developer at risk, regardless of industry.
In January, it was ruled by a federal court in Texas that the Treasury had overstepped its authority by sanctioning Tornado Cash.
Thanks were given by the group to Trump for his support of the industry and his stated goal of making America the “crypto capital of the planet.”
It was added by them, however, that his goal cannot be realized if developers are prosecuted for creating tools that enable the technology.
We ask President Trump to protect American software developers, restore legal clarity, and end this unlawful DOJ overreach. The job’s not finished, and the stakes could not be higher
It was added by him that no justification in law or policy exists for prosecuting software developers for launching non-custodial smart contract protocols.
At the time of writing, 232 signatures had been attracted by the petition from industry executives and developers, including Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam, Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang, and Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko, among others.
