The conviction of Tornado Cash co-founder and developer Roman Storm could set a “dangerous” precedent for developers and privacy, legal observers in the crypto space say.
Storm was found guilty of operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business on Wednesday, Aug. 6. The crime carries a maximum sentence of five years. The jury could not reach a consensus on charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate US sanctions. Federal prosecutors could still retry him on these two charges.
While Storm is yet to face sentencing, other crypto-related cases, including former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and OneCoin co-founder Karl Greenwood, were tried and found guilty in the same district and ended up serving prison time.
Legal professionals and industry observers have decried the verdict, saying that it sets a dangerous precedent for open-source developers and has implications for user privacy.
Roman Storm convicted amid Tornado Cash money laundering concerns
Created in 2019, Tornado Cash is a cryptocurrency mixer and a privacy tool that masks the origin of funds. The tool, founded by Storm, Alexey Pertsev and Roman Semenov, quickly drew the attention of regulators, particularly in the US, which sanctioned the project over its potential use for money laundering before delisting it in March.
Pertsev was arrested in August 2022 in the Netherlands, where he is facing a legal fight of his own. Storm was arrested in the US just one year later, while Semenov remains at large and is on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s most wanted list.

Some have maintained that the Tornado Cash devs cannot or should not be held liable for the actions of the platform’s users, particularly if that platform, as was the case with Tornado Cash, did not have custody or control over the funds. Critics and the US government, particularly, maintained that they are responsible.
Judge Katherine Failla denied a motion to dismiss the case in September 2024, stating that Tornado Cash qualified as a money transmitter, regardless of whether the developers had control over the funds. As such, they should have enacted the same Anti-Money Laundering and Know Your Customer measures as any other such platform.
The privacy-focused crypto community has closely followed the case, and now, with Storm being found guilty, there is concern over what this…
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